Wanderers
by HaLire
Summary: A wayward comment brings old friends back together. Dreams are what you make of them. Also, genies, dreamers, lost souls, and an explosion or two. Oh, and one hell of a fly party, if you catch my drift. Anonymous reviews allowed.
1. It Begins!

Hmm. Guess I don't own Azumanga Daioh, or much of anything, really, I only own what's in my head, and frankly some of that stuff I'd rather not associate with. Have fun, guys. Oh, and this thing takes place somewhere down the line. How far? Time is an illusion, so does it really matter? Probably. Let's say 9 years, because Blastoise was a cool looking pokemon.

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_In one of the idyllic, nondescript meadows that are sparsely sprinkled around the grand country of America, there rests a cottage. From a distance, it looks perfectly ordinary, unless of course, you're a city planner and are personally offended by the fact that only two people live in such a pleasant and empty patch of land. Then again, if you were a city planner, you'd probably know that the empty patch of land is privately owned and that the owner has refused several propositions to turn it into a pleasant patch of suburbia._

_That last bit, of course, is of almost no consequence to us. You are not a city planner. The inhabitants of the cottage, naturally, are the important ones. These two women are quite important to us, and it is your job to watch over them. They are Aladdin and the Genie, but their identities may have been compromised. Go to the enclosed address and protect them using whatever means necessary. Do not fail us, Wildcat._

"Guard duty? Damn!"

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Atop one of the nondescript meadows sprinkled around the United States of America's continental mainland sits a cottage. In the cottage sits a girl. In her head sits a mind of quite unique capacity. In this mind, a thought congeals, and this thought soon finds its way to her mouth and promptly attempts to make its way to her housemate.

"Say, Chiyo-chan, y'know what I was just thinking about?"

"Er, no... not quite. I'm smart, but not psychic."

"Well, what's it mean when people say, 'Oh, a little birdie told me.'?"

"It means they're being sly. Secretive. They don't want to tell you exactly how they got that information."

"And how should you react?"

"Well, they're obviously lying to you about something. They've got a reason to withhold information, and they're trying to be sneaky. You should be a little bit suspicious about them, although it depends on the subject at hand."

"So then there's no point in bein' sneaky about it, right? While tryin' to be sneaky, they wind up arousin' suspicion anyhow, right? The phrase, as it is, has no meanin'! We should retire it."

"I guess so, but you can't really just outright retire a phrase, or at least, you shouldn't be able to. Phrases don't just up and vanish from normal use like that."

"Oh. Still, it bothers me. Bothers me to the core, Chiyo. It gnaws at me, like a soul-termite or something."

"Uh... right. So anyway, I've kind of got to go do some work... you keep thinkin', yeah? Maybe something spectacular will show up."

"Oh, no need for maybe! I've just hit a home run with this idea! What if instead of retirin' the phrase-"

"Which I already told you we can't do."

"-we give it an entirely new meanin'! What if we gave it purpose, changed the way it was done. A revolution! That's my touchdown! Linguistic revolution! We'll give that little phrase an entirely new outlook on life, and he can go out and get a new girlfriend, a new job, get married and raise his own litter of phrase-babies and finally make his parents happy!"

"... Right. So, how do you propose we do that? The literal fashion? Just conjure up some talking birds and have them go around and start communicating to people?"

"Yeah, why not?"

Chiyo's brain is roughly the size of a planet, and while it already had a couple thousand retorts ready and waiting for something like that, the ninety-nine percent of it that wasn't dedicated to the aforementioned retorts was already tinkering with the subject of discussion, and as a matter of fact was already beginning to make it a reality, albeit only in her mind.

After a few days' work, it wouldn't only exist in her mind.

"You're a genius, you know that?"

Chiyo raced down into her workshop, anxious to grant another wish.

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**AN: **Yeah, that's the meager beginnings of this thing. It's just a prologue, though. Actual chapters will probably be substantial, or at least, longer. Read and review, because fanfiction writers are powered by ego and there's nothing like a big ol' review number to help boost along the ego.


	2. A Little Birdie Told Me

Yeah. I still don't own Azumanga Daioh. I do, however, now own a pack of gum. Yay.

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_Lost. I feel lost._

These thoughts ran through the mind of the young athlete just as she ran through her morning laps. They were, however, just warmup, so the athlete awarded herself the liberty of continuing on this mental track.

_Why do I feel lost? I'm doing everything I always wanted to do as a kid. I'm competing, I'm now a professional athlete, and most of all I'm winning... a lot. I should be happy. I should be more than happy. I should be ecstatic. I should be jumping with joy every single day._

_But I don't. Something isn't right he-_

"Hoy! Kagura! Focus!" Her coach's sharp words sliced through the thoughts clouding the mind of the young athlete, and she stopped on the next lap.

"I'm sorry, coach."

"What's wrong with you? I know it's the off-season and all, but you seem very much out of it."

"Ah... well, it's something that's been bothering me, you know? It's just in my mind, though... I can just try to ignore it."

"Sports are as much mental as they are physical, Kagura, you know that. If something is bothering you, then you and I can just talk it out."

"Oh... Well, you see, it's strange. I'm living the dream, you know. I should be immensely satisfied with myself. Ever since I was young I've wanted to do this, I've wanted to be an athlete and I've wanted to be a winner. I am an athlete, and a good one at that. I should be happy, but instead... I don't know, I feel empty. Lost."

"Empty. I see. Well, this is certainly an interesting problem, but it seems that the best thing for you to do is pro-"

A gleaming eagle let loose its shrill cry, cutting off Kagura's coach. It swooped down towards the athlete, circled the pair, and then landed gracefully next to them. It turned to the two, then proceeded to surprise them further by speaking.

"Miss Kagura, I apologize for the short notice, but it would probably be really great for you to come and follow me. An adventure, or at least, a good time. Meet up with some friends, even. Please do."

Kagura's coach was the first to recover. "As I was saying, it's probably best for you to take a break and go... well, find yourself. Think deep thoughts. Don't get out of shape, or anything, but do try to figure out what's wrong with your head."

Kagura, still shocked, was only able to reply with a cryptic "I... I think I know this voice!"

"...so, are you gonna follow the bird?"

"Y...yes!" Kagura replied, running after the eagle as it flew off to destinations unknown to both her and her coach.

"Remember, you can call me if you run into trouble!"

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"Hey! Bad Tama! Don't bite the nice lady!"

"Ow... ah... don't worry, it reminds me of my childhood," replied the smiling vet.

"Your... childhood?"

"It's a long story, don't worry," said the woman as she calmly disconnected the cat from her hand. She continued to smile as she waved to the little boy, his mother, and their cat. As the door closed, her cheerful demeanor vanished. It was replaced with something that wasn't quite sadness, but...

_Lost. I feel lost..._

_But why? I'm doing everything I wanted to do as a kid. I'm now a veterinarian, I'm helping nurse cute things back to health, and I'm making cute little children happy, and most of all I'm around cute things... a lot. I should be happy. I should be more than happy. I should be ecstatic. I should be jumping with joy every single day._

_But I don't. Something isn't right here._

A light tapping on the window shook Sakaki out of her reverie. Somehow, while wandering in her thoughts, she'd wandered to her office as well. She immediately went over to the window to see what was going on. From the looks of it, it was just a tiny little parakeet, quite adorable, simply tapping on her window.

Sakaki smiled gently, grabbed some bird feed from her desk, and went to the window She opened the window, held her hand out to the bird, and said, "You're lucky that I keep this around to see how pets react to it."

The bird did something that was very much unlike parakeets. It answered. "You're lucky that you opened the window for me!"

"What?"

"Follow me, and I'll take you back to people you know. Perhaps then you won't be looking so lost all the time!"

"... am I talking to a bird?"

"Yes. If you follow the little birdie, then good things will probably happen."

"Hey wait, I've heard your voice before..."

"You'll probably see something really cute, too. Follow me!" The bird then took off down the hallway.

"I'm going on vacation!" shouted Sakaki to no one in particular. She then proceeded to run down the hallway after a parakeet, more or less convincing everyone in the building that she was insane.

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Koyomi Mizuhara wandered the nighttime streets of Tokyo despite knowing exactly where she was going.

"It's amazing how lonely one can feel, especially when living in a city with millions and millions of people..." she said, more to herself than anyone in particular.

Still, there are always eavesdroppers. "I can help you with that, yeah," said a man she didn't know, wearing a grin she didn't like.

Yomi kept on walking. She turned down several streets, and made sure that nobody was following her. Eventually, she arrived at a park and set herself down upon a familiar bench.

This bench was home. Well, not quite. There was work, and there was her house, with all its warmth and beds, but this bench was special. This bench was where Yomi went to think and reflect on things. Lately, it seemed that people had been doing a lot of that.

She sat back in the bench, leaned her head up and stared at what would've been stars if this was a clear night. Unfortunately, the clouds prevented that. _Can't be helped_, thought Yomi. Regardless, she closed her eyes, and began to think.

_Lost. I..._

"Feel lost?" asked an unfamiliar voice.

Yomi instantly leapt off the bench, looking around for the source of the voice, but she couldn't see a single person anywhere in sight.

"Down here, Miss Mizuhara."

Yomi turned toward the source of the voice and saw, illuminated by a streetlight, a small black crow.

"I'm down here," said the crow, "but you look pretty down yourself."

"I suppose I do. I am, after all, talking to a bird."

"Maybe you're going insane."

"That's a possibility."

"If you're so set on being insane, then why not go all the way? Follow me, and I'll take you to a whole new world."

"Why would I want to go there?"

"You don't seem too happy here."

"Touchè."

The crow took off, and Yomi took off after it.

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Chiyo turned to her housemate, grinning. "Hey, the Parakeet, Eagle, and Crow all found their targets!"

"Hmm?"

"Erm... my messengers. Never mind, you'll see, it'll all work out."

"So it was a total success?"

"Well... not total, but..."

"Oh. You only sent out three?"

"No... I sent four out..."

"But only three are coming back."

"The fourth one stopped responding."

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The Wildcat stood over a pile of scrap metal that may have at one point been something useful.

"Ah, clockwork," she murmured to herself.

_Wouldn't want it to ruin my surprise._

The thought of what she was going to do made her grin widely. By the time she had gotten past to the suburbs, she was chuckling to herself. When she'd escaped the city limits and entered the wilderness (or at least, as much of a wilderness as can be found just outside of a big city) she allowed herself to laugh openly.

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Yomi ran after her crow.

_It's surprisingly easy to leave everything behind... I guess there really isn't much to miss, anyway.  
_

Sakaki chased after her parakeet.

_There's got to be something more to life than what I've got._

Kagura chased after her eagle.

_If I can't keep up with that bird, then I don't deserve what it's offering me anyway_.

The three women burst into a placid, empty-looking field at roughly the same time. In this sort of place, with this sort of meeting, it is to be expected that they would've seen each other, been overjoyed at the reunion, and immediately dropped everything to run to each other and exchange hugs and stories.

That did not happen.

Not because of any bad blood, mind you, but there was something else to attract their attention situated in the meadow, and to be fair, it was pretty hard to ignore.

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**A/N: **HaLire loev review.


	3. Bringin' Home The Bacon

I don't own Azumanga Daioh, and I finished my pack of gum. HaLire is sad!

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The object in the meadow was not particularly striking for its type. It was, however,not exactly the sort of thing one expects to find in clear, open meadows. Furthermore, the three women had just spent some considerable time chasing after talking birds, and so it is quite understandable that their minds were generally not in a normal state of being. Coupled with mild exhaustion, it is probably not terribly surprising that Yomi, Kagura, and Sakaki did not notice each other.

They did, however, notice the small plane sitting placidly in the middle of the idyllic meadow, in clear defiance of the apparent lack of runway, control tower, little people with glowing sticks, or any of the other things which generally accompany planes in the mind's eye.

The three birds alighted atop the plane, and soon afterwards the plane's door opened and a staircase descended. The birds flew right on in.

Kagura stepped towards the staircase.

_I've chased this bird for I-don't-know-how-long, and damned if I'm going to let something like a small plane stand in my way._

Sakaki strode towards the staircase.

_I've followed you here, parakeet, and I'm not letting you get away._

Yomi walked towards the staircase.

_Take me somewhere, please, somewhere that isn't mediocre._

Each woman advanced on the staircase purposefully, fire burning in their eyes and determination seething within their hearts. With each step their resolve hardened, and as they got closer to the staircase fear and anxiety seemed to melt away. A few feet away from the staircase, all doubt had evaporated, and the plane became the only thing in the world, a singular destination that would free them from the shackles of their current lives...

It is too bad that they bumped into each other just at the foot of the staircase. All three girls, hailing from crowded Tokyo, were more than accustomed to bumping into people, and even bumping into two people at once wasn't too strange of an occurrence.

Of course, Tokyo isn't an idyllic meadow, but the standard reflex reply was still triggered. Each woman glanced towards the other two for a split second, gave a slight nod of the head, and apologized. Afterwards, they returned to staring at the plane.

The realization of exactly who she had bumped into clicked in Sakaki's mind first. She glanced back down at the other two women. Of course, accustomed and inclined as she was towards silence, she simply said nothing, trying to maintain dignity.

Yomi's double-take was a fraction of a second behind Sakaki's, and Yomi was not inclined towards silence as the taller woman was. Upon the sight of her two old friends, she managed to limit her surprised scream to, "You two! Holy hell!"

Those words caused Kagura to look back down at the two. Her brain, at the time, was busy trying to deal with the fact that she had just followed a talking eagle through a forest into a bright meadow, and that she was just about to follow it into a plane. Busy as it was trying to overwrite all of the standard "Don't go into the stranger's van" instructions that had been hardwired since childhood, the unfortunate organ was in no way prepared for another pair of childhood influences to come streaking back into her life.

Kagura's brain lost control of, well, Kagura, and she collapsed to the floor in a fashion that closely resembled meaty jello. Her mouth opened, but all that came out was a strange little "Gfarblegarblejarrg..."

At the plane's doorway, a tiny little girl with orange pigtails glanced down at them. It then asked in a honeyed tone, "Now that you've met each other, would you like to board?"

Kagura stared up at the figure.

"Harbl."

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Kagura eventually managed to collect herself enough to get into the plane, although she lacked all of the inspiring purpose that she held earlier.

The figure wasn't Chiyo, though it was an interesting facsimile. The tiny little robot grinned at the three women.

"Welcome to the _Wings of Fate_!" it announced in a high pitched voice which was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Chiyo's voice. "We'll be arriving at our destination in, oh, about 17 hours. Relax and mingle until then!"

There was a strange sound, an odd rumbling, and the plane began to rise up off of the ground. It did so in defiance of the general understanding of how planes work, as though it had simply decided that the ground wasn't a terribly good friend and just wanted to slowly drift apart from it. After a minute or so of slow rising, the plane's engines took off and it behaved as planes are meant to behave. The ground was left to contemplate the relationship that could've been.

Inside the plane, an uncomfortable silence ruled, its oppressive hand felt by all. Conversations are hard to start up, after all, especially given the separation of so many years. Quiet tension ruled the cabin.

Eventually, Yomi decided to break it. She turned around to Kagura, ready to bring up something, anything, to try to spark the active heart of their close friendship from nearly a decade ago.

Kagura was asleep.

She turned to Sakaki, but the tall woman was asleep as well.

Yomi frowned to herself.

_I suppose they would be tired. I'm a bit sleepy too, I guess. I spent all this time chasing that damned crow, and... I guess they were chasing something too._

Having satisfied her sensibilities, she drifted off to sleep as well.

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Seventeen hours is, however, a startlingly huge amount of time and it takes a terribly huge amount of determination and willpower to sleep for all that time.

Neither of the girls had it.

Kagura awoke first. Groggily, she tried to remember exactly where she was.

_A plane. I'm on this plane because I was chasing something... That talking eagle. I was chasing that talking bird, and I followed it to the plane. That eagle thing descended on me while I was training, when I was talking to my co-_

"Oh damn! I forgot to call my coach!" shouted Kagura.

That sound woke Yomi and Sakaki, but they were still caught in the wispy claws of lingering sleep. Neither roused much nor voiced a reply, but both listened in to Kagura.

"Yeah, sorry about not calling you. I know, I know. Well, you did tell me to... So I'm on a plane... You don't need to yell! I'm sorry. No, I don't know that. I'll call you when we land, or something."

She put away the phone and stood up, staring around the cabin. She looked towards her friends, but something else demanded her attention.

A coffee machine! She leaped out of her seat and ran towards the machine, fiddling with it until it started to spurt out something extremely necessary for the situation: Caffeine.

"Hey... Kagura... brew me a cup, will ya?" murmured a still half-asleep Yomi.

"Yeah, me too, if you don't mind," requested Sakaki.

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A few cups of caffeine-filled goodness later, the spirit of conversation had come to life and crushed the uncomfortable shackles of silence.

"...so yeah, that's exactly how it went down!" exclaimed a cheerful Kagura, recounting her triumphs as an athlete.

"Ah, what an interesting life you lead," replied Yomi, smiling pleasantly at the tanned girl.

"Oh, but what have you been doing?"

"Nothing much, really. My life's been sort of... sort of an exercise in mediocrity. An office girl, a decent home, that sort of thing. Normalcy." Yomi's tone was neutral, but her posture slackened slightly. "There isn't really much to say about myself, I'm afraid. Of course, that doesn't mean we're out of material! Sakaki, what have you been up to?"

Sakaki glanced at the two, smiling. "Can't you tell?"

Kagura looked over at the tall girl. "You're wearing a lab coat! Aha, a doctor, or something, eh? Set me up with a handsome colleague if you can!"

"Er... I'm not a doctor, not quite, anyway. I'm a vet. I guess that people aren't too different from the patients I get, but my job is to treat the cute and cuddly."

"I should have expected that much," said Yomi, "but, if you don't mind me asking, why do you carry around that suitcase? You've already got a purse, unless..."

"You were forewarned!" interrupted Kagura. She continued, "Perhaps you were the one who planned this entire thing, just a clever ruse to bring us all back together with cute little birds! It seems right up your alley!"

"No it doesn't," objected Sakaki, "and I wasn't. I carry around this suitcase because it's got my medical supplies in it. When I became a vet, Tomo asked me, 'Hey, so what do you do if you see a dog get hit by a car or something? Can you save him, or would you need medical supplies?' So... so now, I carry them around.They're not that heavy, and while I'm not an athlete, I'm not exactly a weak girl, so it's not too much trouble for me."

"Tomo..." Yomi said, more to herself than anyone else, and her posture slackened once more.

"So then, I wonder who invited us? Sakaki, Yomi, what do you guys think?"

"Well, there was that tiny little Chiyo-bot, so maybe it was her," offered up Sakaki. "She was also rich, and... you know, a genius."

"I don't think that Chiyo would send us a tiny little robot version of herself in order to greet us," countered Yomi. "I think it was Osaka, personally. She liked wordplay and all of that weird stuff, and she really did think in... abstract ways. I mean, talking birds, a tiny robot Chiyo-chan, how could it not be her? Besides, she loved wordplay, remember? We were picked up by a plane on a plain."

"Grasping at straws there, aren't you? I think Osaka wouldn't have the general know-how to set something like this up. She'd have to collaborate with someone," Kagura replied. "Tomo, however, was deranged, and furthermore she had the energy. If she really just decided on this kind of thing, I'm sure she could have brought it all together eventually. I mean, she at the very least has the energy to see it through. It probably started up as just 'Hey, wouldn't it be nice if we all met up again?' and then, over time, it just kind of degenerated into this ridiculous plan involving talking birds and tiny robots and a seventeen-hour flight over the Pacific."

"I could see that happening," Sakaki said. "However, I think we're making a mistake in limiting it to just our closest friends. Tunnel vision costs lives, you know... What if it's not them? What if it was Kaori, or Chihiro, or that girl with the handlebar-braids?"

"Hey, I remember Rachel Handlebars! I don't remember Chihiro though..." said Yomi, somewhat ashamed with herself.

"Everyone forgets Chihiro," interjected Kagura. "Besides, it can't be Kaori. If it was Kaori she would have only invited you, Sakaki, and she'd have come in person."

Sakaki blushed, and the three women continued to debate the identity of their hosts for the remainder of the flight.

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Eventually the plane landed, and the stairway descended again.

This was not a city, or an airport, or... well, anything important, really. As a matter of fact, most people would've been convinced that this place was a desert.

It wasn't. It was actually a semidesert, but the point is that it was hot, dry, and empty.

Well, not exactly empty. There was a small, white, bowl-shaped thing sitting placidly in the sand. On the side, in big bold letters, the name _Bringin' Home The Bacon_ was scribbled.

_Bringin' Home The Bacon_? thought Sakaki. _It couldn't be..._

"You should get in that." said the Chiyo-bot, retracting the stairway and waving goodbye to the three women in the desert.

Semidesert.

The girls piled into the little white saucer, which had more than enough space for them.

Yomi looked around, and saw a control panel. On the control panel was a note, with an arrow pointing toward a button indistinguishable from the others.

_This is probably the best button to push_, said the note.

"Oh, hell, we've gone this far on impulse..." murmured Yomi, and she pressed the button.

The little saucercraft lifted off of the ground and floated in defiance of gravity for a short while. During this short while, the laws of the universe simmered angrily and a plastic dome closed over the three women.

Kagura, slightly panicked, asked Yomi, "Do you have any idea what you've just done?"

"Nope."

_Bringin' Home The Bacon _rocketed off in no particular direction, leaving the _Wings of Fate _to sit in the desert until it was required again.

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Eventually, the saucercraft stopped in the middle of an idyllic meadow, the type which is generally sprinkled sparsely across the continental U.S. and featured prominently in peaceful movies. In the middle of the idyllic meadow sat a quaint little white cottage, the sort that brings up childhood memories of fairy tales and trips to grandmother's house.

The three women climbed out of the Saucercraft, split up to vomit in peace, and then rejoined each other.

"Let's... um... never do that again." suggested Sakaki.

"I'm all for it." agreed Kagura.

"Magical Land should contact that thing's creators... Speaking of which..." Yomi's voice trailed off as she noticed the pleasant little cottage.

"Doesn't seem like a very tech-savvy sort of place, if you ask me." Nobody did, but Kagura didn't mind voicing her opinions. "In any case, we should probably go inside."

The three women walked towards the cottage door with purpose in their step and knocked with conviction. If books were devoted towards remembering legendary knocks, this one would have been a shoo-in.

The door opened, and all three women recoiled in surprise.

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**A/N**: Oooh, sorry about the delay. I got distracted by things! And, sorry to say, but I won't be able to update for about a week, as I must go fly off into the dangerous oceans in order to fight sharks with my fists in order to thwart their attempts to take over the world... Well, I could also be going to college orientation, but don't you think that the shark story is more interesting?

Something absolutely pointless that may interest you...

Contenders for Kagura's shocked phrases: Girafarigalrb... Blarghlefarble... blehaaagh... Krrrrgha?


	4. The Good and the BAD

I don't own Azumanga Daioh, or... anything, really. "Ownage" is one of the words that you'd almost never want to use while describing me.

Read and review, because HaLire loev review.

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The figure in the door loomed above them, the top of its head actually high enough to be obscured by the doorframe. All they could see was an impossibly innocent face and a torso which positively identified its owner as female, albeit not the most well-endowed.

_Something about this just feels... familiar,_ thought Kagura, craning her neck upwards painfully. _There's just... an air about this person, and... that smile... It couldn't be...!_

"O...Osaka?"

"Yep, thassme!" replied the figure in the doorway.

Sakaki stared, but felt somewhat relieved. Finally, there was someone taller than her, though it would've been nice if that person wasn't nearly one and a half times her height. Kagura just continued to stare up at her old friend, absolutely baffled by the change.

Yomi came to her senses first, thinking, _It must be uncomfortable for her to be so freakishly tall, and it probably doesn't help that we're staring at her like she's some sort of horrendous freak. _Guiltily, she averted her eyes from Osaka's half-hidden visage, and turned them towards the ground.

Yomi then noticed that Osaka's feet weren't exactly on the ground. Rather, they were floating a few feet off of the ground.

"Osaka! Your feet!" she shouted.

"Hmm? What, do I have athlete's foot? 'cause if so, I think that's not my foot. I'm no athlete. Maybe it's Kagura's."

"... I know that you've got your head in the clouds all the time, but this... this is ridiculous, Osaka!"

"What is?" asked Osaka, her voice as airy as her mind was. Still, the gap between the floor and her feet shrank and eventually vanished.

Her demand for normalcy satisfied, Yomi sighed and looked up at Osaka, saying, "Yes. That's much better, but how exactly were you do-WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?"

"What's what?"

Sakaki, having gotten over her disappointment at once again becoming the towering one, said "I... uh, think she means your... headgear." She gestured towards the strange contraption on Osaka's head.

At a glance, it looked like a simple metal colander, upturned and placed upon her head. What distinguished it from other colanders was pair of appendages, one protruding from each side of the bowl, above Osaka's ears. They were little carrot-colored buns, slowly flapping and eventually stopping as the airy girl alighted upon the ground with the grace that only comes from being absolutely clueless as to the strangeness of the situation.

"Oh. Well, I know it's kinda strange to wear hats inside the house, but you see, I really like hats."

Memories rushed into Yomi's mind, primarily concerning themselves with reminding her that attempting to drag Osaka back into the real world usually resulted in frustration. She settled for a subject change. "Osaka... would you prefer if we called you by your real name? Ayumu Kasuga, was it?"

"Oh, no need for that, Yomi! I'm used to "Osaka" anyway."

_Used to it?_ thought Yomi. She wasn't an attorney, or a detective, or anything like that, but even she could see the contradiction in that statement!

"Hold it! That's impossible! We've been apart for... nine years, was it?"

"Oh, well... yeah, just about."

"Is that them, Osaka?" asked a not entirely new voice. "Have they finally arrived?"

The source of the voice turned a corner a few meters behind Osaka. She wasn't exactly of a striking build, and in fact looked far more childish than any of the other girls. Then again, she was also a good five years younger than all the other girls. Still, intelligence of indescribable magnitude shone from behind her eyes. If the eyes weren't telling enough, her hair was an interesting carrot-orange color and was still done up in a shape quite reminiscent of the appendages on Osaka's hat.

The girl walked forward and stood next to Osaka. She wasn't terribly short, but Osaka still had a couple inches on her.

Sakaki blushed, but didnt' say anything. The girl was disarmingly adorable.

Yomi didn't say anything, mostly because her mind was still locked down, a common result of dealing with Osaka.

Kagura noted this and decided that it was up for her to break the silence. "Osaka? Who... exactly... is this?"

"Mai waifu." replied Osaka, in a tone eerily reminiscent of a certain high school teacher.

"Y-... you can't be serious, can you? I mean... you... and... and..."

"Haha," laughed Osaka, mostly to herself. "No, no, they wouldn't allow that kind of marriage in this country, at least, not yet anyway. Still, Chiyo and I are pretty happy together." She gave Kagura a smile that was at once knowing and unknowing, then leaned down towards Chiyo and kissed her passionately.

Chiyo returned the favor, embracing Osaka.

Kagura, Yomi, and Sakaki looked on in stunned silence.

In the next room, a TV burbled to itself. "BAD raids worldwide are intensifying." Nobody paid attention to it.

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A man sat in a darkened room, admiring the way the dramatic lighting made his impromptu throne glint in all the right ways. He slouched down into the cushions, enjoying them immensely. He closed his eyes and imagined a time when he would have a proper throne, one that wouldn't need dramatic lighting, one that wouldn't be made mostly of molten folding-chairs, one that...

The throne room proceeded to rotate rapidly, and he fell out of his throne.

It would be nice to have a throne that didn't do that.

_You take the good with the bad,_ he thought to himself as he climbed back into the chair. _Doubly so for the BAD. _

The BAD was his starting point. With control of the BAD, he could eventually menace smaller countries into submission and, given some luck, work his way up on the international food chain. Today, the BAD was not even recognized as an individual country, but in a few years, the BAD would be a major player on the world stage.

That being said, it would probably be nice to know what the BAD is.

The BAD is the Belligerent Aerial Dominion, or BAD. Both the acronym and the Dominion itself are the result of very, very intelligent people getting very, very drunk.

The BAD started off as a major party for intellectuals. These people had been watching the rest of the world for a long time, and felt a bit shorted when it came to parties. The parties displayed by the media were extravagant affairs where everyone dropped their inhibitions and simply had a damned good time. These intellectuals were, quite simply, not invited to those sorts of parties. Intellectual parties were generally boring events where people tried to prove themselves smarter than one another in a way polite enough to avoid a fistfight.

"Well, to hell with that," decided one of these intellectuals. He then proceeded to buy a middling-sized hotel in the middle of nowhere, which was fairly easy because people who own middling-sized hotels in the middle of nowhere are pretty keen on getting rid of them, and then procured drinks. Lots of drinks. Snacks too. In fact, he grabbed a lot of the fun things that intellectuals generally avoid because they know the drawbacks of the aforementioned fun things.

He then proceeded to invite lots of very smart people from many fields. Engineers, humanitarians, writers, poets, astrophysicists, doctors, surgeons, generals... the list went on. He told them to invite anyone else who they thought would fare well at a typical intellectual party.

It started off slowly, but eventually, everyone let down their inhibitions. Common sense evaporated rather quickly, but these were still very smart people. They knew how to do a lot of very wonderful things, they just didn't have the common sense to say, "Hey, that's a bad idea."

Somewhere along the way, a large number of drunken aeronautic engineers decided that the party should set itself apart from other parties, but not in a way that encouraged the haughty, uptight atmosphere of previous intellectual parties. The stumbled upon a terrific idea, one that they were sure would make the aerospace guys the hit of the party for however long it lasted, which at this point had been roughly two weeks.

Unfortunately, when the party took off, nobody noticed. Most people attributed the liftoff-lurch to a simple drunken stumble. The aerospace guys were disappointed, but those feelings soon evaporated in a haze of alcohol. Still, the party danced across the sky in a way that was beautiful, unpredictable, and slightly reminiscent of a toddler learning how to walk.

Three weeks in, the party was running out of steam. Drinks were running low. In desperation, one of the military types suggested raiding nearby towns for supplies like, food and water, but mostly for alcohol. The engineers did their thing, and soon the flying hotel was armed, dangerous, and able to pump alcohol, dip, and chips into specified containers. A cunning linguist commented that since they were now armed, they should refer to themselves as the "Belligerent Aerial Dominion," and the name stuck, mostly because smart people couldn't get enough of a silly name like "The BAD guys."

The transition from full-time party to part-time raiding party gave it that little extra kick, and so it's been going on for several months now.

This was all well and good, and one of the generals had risen above the rest and become the impromptu leader of the BAD due to his exceptional Rock-Paper-Scissors skills. He was an ambitious man, and the BAD was steadily gaining influence in the world under his leadership, and he couldn't be happier.

He had even sent out some of those exceptionally cunning linguists located in the throng of drunken intellectuals. These linguists had walked the earth for a while, giving dazzling speeches and touching the hearts of many common folk. These common folk, then, became ready-made soldiers and agents for BAD, none of which could actually reveal anything useful were they captured.

As a matter of fact, he was so forward thinking that he'd sent out some of these minor soldiers to capture other intellectuals, thus assuring BAD a constant influx of new ideas and, more importantly, new people. Parties do get boring after a while with just the same old bunch, after all.

_This is a pretty damned good gig,_ he thought to himself.

He fell out of his throne again.

_Still, it'd be nice if the pilots would stop barrel-rolling the hotel for the hell of it._

_----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------_

Two men wandered around in an idyllic meadow.

"I can't believe we're doing this. We're going to kidnap a little girl, and we're not getting paid." complained one.

"You heard what that guy said, didn't you? We've gotta do this!" replied the other.

"Why's that, exactly?

"I... I don't quite remember right now, but he was very convincing!"

"Do you remember where that damn cottage is?"

"Yeah."

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The Wildcat crept closer to the cottage, paying the commotion at the entrance little attention. She sat down, fairly well concealed, and pondered how to go about her business.

_After all, there's more than one way to skin a cat._ The Wildcat giggled to herself quietly, and then glanced on over to her charges and their friends.

Then her two charges engaged in a kiss that, from this distance, looked incredibly passionate. Messy too.

_It'll be hard to top that._

She crept over to the side of the house and waited.

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"You... you're joking, right?" asked Kagura, still staring at her childhood friends who were just now breaking their lip-lock.

Osaka's only response was to wipe a bit of Chiyo's saliva off of her bottom lip.

"Gfarblegarblejarrg..." replied Kagura. She then proceeded to slump onto the ground in a way that was more reminiscent of a fussy baby than a toned, powerful athlete.

Osaka grinned at the pile of meat that used to be Kagura. "Gotcha."

"Harbl."

"What Kagura means to say," interrupted Yomi, "is that that was a hell of a kiss for a joke."

"We've been working on it for the last, oh, five hours or so." said Chiyo.

"Oh. Well then, I guess that the only question left is 'Which of you two should we strangle first?'"

"You could strangle us," said the shorter girl, "But then you would miss out on cake. If you'll all follow me, in the next room we've got a table and delicious cake."

"I know what you're thinkin'," continued Osaka. "You're thinkin' 'Delicious cake! I must eat it!' but the room also has a very nice window, with a very nice view of the outside."

Yomi, Kagura, and Sakaki gave up on trying to understand the situation and simply followed their hostesses into the next room, which was exactly as described.

Sakaki, who hadn't said anything for some time, continued to say nothing. She instead quietly enjoyed the presence of her friends.

_I don't need to say anything... I'm happy just being with them._

"It's nice, isn't it? To have us all together again..." said Kagura, taking her seat.

"Not all of us, I'm afraid." corrected Yomi. "Where's Tomo?"

"Oh... I'm sad to say that I couldn't contact her," replied Chiyo.

"You're telling me that you managed to send a small plane, animatronic birds, and a UFO to get the three of us and you couldn't even send her a telephone call or an email or something?"

"Yeah. She seems to have just... up and vanished."

The girls mulled quietly over the thought of a world without Tomo, and an uncomfortable silence engulfed the room.

Then the window exploded.

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**Author's Note: **Finally updated! If you can't tell yet, I'm fairly big on Douglas Adams's work, so if you see bits and pieces of it seep in in places, well, smile to yourself and say "Oh, this one's a kindred spirit! We read the same books!" Or... something, I don't know. If you wanna say something to me, stick up a review or e-mail me or bugger me on MSN or something, because frankly, Summer means that I have like, 4 million more hours to do things than I normally would. You literally cannot waste my time in a way worse than I already am.


	5. Are Windows Expensive?

I don't own Azumanga Daioh, or... anything. I'd like to say that I own Mr. Beaufort, but then I'd probably have a run in with someone over slavery laws.

I apologize for that terrible, terrible joke. Without further adieu, here's the story.

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The girls, who were just getting ready to sit down, eat cake and reminisce about their friend, reacted in exactly the fashion in which you would expect them to were they suddenly surprised by a shattering window.

They screamed. A lot. The five women leapt out of their chairs, clustered together for security, and watched the rain of glass.

In the midst of the rain of glass was the cause of the shattered window, a figure wearing a black cloak, with the hood pulled up over its head. It landed amongst the shards on the floor, and crouched down, almost bowing to the girls.

They kept screaming.

The figure stood up and raised its head, but its face was still concealed by a grinning mask. The cloak billowed around dramatically.

The girls fell silent. The figure said nothing. The two parties stared at each other for what seemed like aeons, with nothing but the sound of the billowing cloak attempting to contest the reign of silence.

A quiet "click" changed all that. The dark cloak flickered slightly, crackling with energy, and then came to life. Across the mysterious figure's garb, nothing could be seen but rows upon rows of Chiyo-chans, arms interlocked and kicking, cabaret-style.

"It's the Chiyo-chan revue!" declared the figure.

"That voice!" exclaimed Yomi. "You... you're... T..."

The figure reached up and removed its grinning mask, revealing yet another perpetually grinning visage. This one, however, was unmistakable.

"Tomo!" cried out the girls in unison.

"Stop right there!" cried out Tomo, before the girls ran over to embrace her. "You'll cut yourself on the glass. I'll come over there!" With that, she leapt cleanly over the glass and collided with her old friends, taking them down but managing to leave the cake unscathed.

The writhing mass of giggling young women took some time to organize itself into something that could actually stand up, but they managed it eventually.

_We're all together again. Complete. This just feels right_, thought Kagura, looking at Tomo's ridiculous cape. Her gaze followed Tomo's figure upwards, and as she looked at her old friend's face, she realized something.

"Tomo! Your face... it's scarred! What happened to you?"

"Eheh... Let's just say that I jump through a lot of windows."

"S'long as we're all gettin' reacquainted and such, why don't we do it over cake? There's another room over there that has a nice view, though it's pointed more towards the big city." With that said, Osaka lifted the cake and headed towards the other side of the house.

Tomo, however, would have none of that. "Osaka! What... what happened to your lovely accent"  
"Oh... I guess that livin' in America for so long kinda wore it away, y'know? Somethin' about speakin' mostly English, and then havin' only Chiyo here to speak Japanese with. It just wears off over time, I guess."

"It's not going to be that easy, Tomo." declared Yomi, irritably.

"Whatever do you mean, Yomi?"

"This! All this! We haven't even heard from you for like, six or seven years, and you leap into Chiyo's house wearing some kind of utterly bizzare cloak and mask, and you expect us to not raise questions?"

"Questions like... like what?"

"Where have you been all these years?"

"People grow apart, you know..."

The group of girls arrived in the room, but chose to let Tomo and Yomi have their conversation in private. Kagura called up her coach while Osaka, Chiyo, and Sakaki had their own exercise in small-talk.

"The hell do you mean by that?"

"They grow apart. Look, you didn't keep in close contact with any of these other folk either, did you? The only ones of us who really stuck together were Chiyo and Osaka, it seems."

"Yeah, but you just... you just vanished on me."

"I'm sorry for that, I really am. Well, this is a pretty icky subject, eh? Let's... let's change it. What've you been up to?"

"An average life. Office girl, no love interests, just living day in, day out. Nothing special. You?"

"I'm actually a secret agent sent here to protect Chiyo and maybe Osaka from would-be kidnappers. I'm part of a hidden multinational organization dedicated to protecting the world from threats that can't be solved with mere declarations of war. A counter-terrorist organization, if you will."

This caught the other girls' attention, naturally, and all idle conversation paused as everyone focused on Tomo.

"Kidding. I'm actually an out of work actress. I double as, well, a stunt double, hence the face. I thought the other story was a bit more exciting, though."

An awkward silence once again descended upon the room, but Chiyo decided to break it before it could try anything tricky. "Tomo, I'm almost one hundred percent positive that Osaka and I made that cape! How'd you get that thing?"

"You made that?" asked Sakaki, incredulously. "You and Osaka? What exactly do you two do?"

"Sorry coach, I've gotta go." muttered Kagura, shutting her phone. "I've gotta hear this."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Hmm? What do you mean, the circumstances have changed? I've got to do what? More people? She's just a little girl, you know. Oh, that many, then. It'll be hard. Yes, yes, I've got it. Still want me to do the other thing? Yeah, okay."

Rémy Beaufort frowned to himself. More work foisted upon his shoulders because of those damned military types. The French linguist wandered the streets of the city, looking for a bar. Bars were good places to find people who would simply listen to you for the hell of it, and if people would just listen to Beaufort, people would really _listen_ to Beaufort.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Hey, is that the cottage?"

"Yeah. Looks pretty peaceful, doesn't it?"

"Shame that we're gonna have to... you know."

"Yeah, but just the little one. The rest don't matter, so don't hurt them."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"It's probably best if I start from where we all left each other. I think we all knew that we'd split up, and we knew that we'd break off. It felt like I lost something when I was separated from you guys, really. Like I wasn't complete. In America, I had trouble making friends. I was just that freakishly smart Japanese girl who was in their classes. It didn't matter, though. I didn't really need study groups anyhow. I got my degrees, lots of them, in various fields, and I tried to get work, but it wasn't any fun. You see, in any of the interesting fields, one needs to be able to think somewhat differently. I wanted to do research, but I always had trouble coming up with an actual idea, something to pursue. Instead, I wound up doing work for others while they did all the actual thinking, but in that respect I wasn't much more useful than a computer."

She was interrupted by a shocked Sakaki. "But how? Chiyo, you're a genius! That's not right!"

"Do you remember, Sakaki, when we met up after the New Year during High School? Do you remember how you all told me that you had dreams with me in them? Do you remember what I said?"

"You said that... you didn't have any dreams."

"I didn't. I still don't. I don't know if it's something wrong with my head, but I can't dream. My brain can't wander. It's firmly grounded in reality, and it doesn't want to budge. Sometimes I wonder if it's because I was thrust so far forward in my childhood, if I lost touch with that part of me. Maybe I can't dream because I never learned how to."

Chiyo sagged slightly. Osaka spoke up. "Of course, this is where I come in. In college, I did 'bout as good as you'd expect me to. Rather, t'was that I didn' do terribly well in anythin' that required, well, actual mechanical knowhow. Math? Science? Heh, completely lost worlds to me. I found myself doin' more and more of the Humanities stuff, studyin' mythos and literature and all that. I had a grand ole' time in college, but it ended, as all things must."

Osaka paused to let her previous statement sink in. She didn't doubt that certain people expected her to simply drop out of college. "Well, it turns out that even though I had my degree, it wasn't really worth much. Sure, that lil' piece of paper proved that I spent a lot of time readin' things and lookin' at art and all of that, but, well, nobody cared, really. I fell into kind of a slump after that, realizing that those years weren't really worth much of anythin'. The days kinda blended together, and there was just lethargy all about, like a summer vacation where you don't have anything to do, except more extreme. Then, one day, I got a letter from Chiyo with an airline ticket. I came over to visit, and it was real pleasant like for a while. I decided that I wouldn't go home anymore."

"Weren't your parents... well, mad?" asked Kagura.

"No, not really. I told them that I'd found a job here, and then I proceeded to get some minimum-wage job so I could show the papers to my parents. They weren't really able to tell either way, so they just wished me luck in my endeavors. I lived with Chiyo for a while, leeching off of her. I felt pretty bad about it."

"Then, one day, she contributed," interrupted Chiyo, "a lot. Her mind... it just seems to work differently than everyone else's. If mine is firmly grounded in reality, then hers has taken flight in absolute defiance of the laws of the universe. Speaking of which, that flying hat she was wearing, that was one of our first creations together. It was a good relationship. She dreams all the time, and I... I can't dream, but I can make dreams reality."

Chiyo and Osaka, having finished their story, started on their cake.

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"Yes, well, you see, there's this girl, right? And we invited her to our party, but she doesn't want to come. That's why we need your help," said Beaufort, not entirely sober.

"Why should we help you? We don't even know you."

Beaufort gazed into his eyes, a knowing stare that penetrated the man's very soul. "You see, it's not just an ordinary party. It's a gathering of intellectuals, you see? Very smart people, and we're getting men and women from all fields to mingle. It's a very brainy melting pot, to be frank. When you put that many smart people together, what do you get? You get progress in many different fields due to the combination of so many different viewpoints. It has so much potential for progress, and progress only benefits mankind. This girl here, she's a genius, you know, but she wouldn't come when we sent her an invitation. We're positive that she'll come over to our side when she sees it in full, however, so really we're just asking you to do this for the benefit of mankind, for the benefit of our species as a whole! It'd be almost traitorous for you to not help us persuade her."

Beaufort focused his piercing stare on each of the six people whom he had bought drinks for, and then smiled as each one nodded back to him. He handed them an address and his phone number. "Call me if you have any problems, alright? These here are guns. Real simple, you know. Point-and-click. Don't hurt anyone unless you absolutely have to, but sometimes it's hard to convince people. Remember, this is for the good of mankind."

Rémy Beaufort then got up and left the little bar and the six men standing there.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Osaka and Chiyo finished their cake quietly, putting their plates down.

"Well now, I don't see why y'all have to be so quiet. It's not like our story didn't have a happy ending, after all. We came together and we're living happily, right?"

"Yeah, bu-" Kagura started, but was immediately interrupted by the sound of shattering glass.

Two men leapt through the window, glaring at the six girls.

The girls leapt up, shocked. They started to scream, but quickly stopped when the men pointed a pair of handguns in their direction.

"Hey guysh, whazz all thish abouh?" asked Tomo, just before she fell towards the two men, landing flat on her face at their feet. "Shorry, musht've had a bit much tah drink."

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**Author's Notes **

I think that "h" is the letter that most resembles a bottle of alcohol, but "d" and "b" sure are up there. Still, it'd be pretty weird to write "Hey guysb, wbazz all disd aboub?"

As a fanfiction writer, I no longer only love reviews. Reviews are now nourishment! I am powered by reviews! Well, kinda. Oh, and sorry about the absence of an actual example as to what Osaka and Chiyo've invented together. I wanted to come up with something spectacular, you know? Something that was really, really out there, something that you really need to dream to create. Unfortunately, I'm more of the "grounded in reality" type than the "adrift in the ridiculousness of my own mind" sort.

Well, actually, I had a pretty cool idea, but it doesn't relate to this story at all. I mean, I really liked it, but I'd have to start an entirely new story to even use it. Maybe later.


	6. Wildcat

I don't own Azumanga Daioh. Don't own much of anything else, either. Shame, isn't it?

If the text is in **bold**, then the girls are speaking English for the time being. I should have done this with earlier chapters, but it only really applies to the times when Tomo or the girls have to speak English, as they normally speak Japanese. Yeah, weirdness, I know. If it's not one of the girls, they're probably speaking English anyway. I should've stated this with earlier chapters, but I just thought about it today.

Read and review, because I am powered by reviews!

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The two men looked at Tomo's figure, laying on the ground in front of them. The voice was definitely feminine, although everything was hidden beneath that bizzare cloak with the dancing girls on it.

Tomo hiccuped. "**Righ, righ, s'okay, don' yeh fret 'bout me.**" It was English... kind of. Somehow, Tomo managed to struggle to her feet without pulling her arms on the cloak.

The two men stared at the scar-faced girl. Sakaki shifted slightly.

"Hold it!" cried one of the men, pointing his gun at the five. "Don't try anything! We just want the little girl. The rest of you won't be harmed."

Tomo glanced up at him and gave him an unsteady stare. "**Yeh, yeh. I tol' Chiyo thah Ahmericah wash noht a safe place," **she said, stumbling slightly. "**An' now I gotsta save her ash and everynyun elshes ashes too!**"

Tomo's words hung in the air for a moment as everyone tried to decipher her broken, drunken English.

"**Don' habeeb meeh? I'll show yah! All yahs!**" she cried, and then there was a flash of movement beneath her cloak. Tomo's arm shot forward and hung in the air somewhat crookedly. Held in her hand was what seemed to be a slightly bulky handgun, although...

"Tomo! It's pointed the wrong way! It's pointed at you!" cried Kagura.

"What did she just say?" demanded the man with his gun pointed at the girls.

"I don't know," replied his companion, focusing his gun on Tomo, "but I bet it has to do with this moron's firearm." He looked down at his opponent's firearm, which was pointed directly at Tomo, and couldn't resist. He laughed.

"**Lafh at me, will yeh? I... I'll getchah!**"

"Tomo, no!" cried Kagura.

Tomo pulled the trigger, and her pistol let out a fearsome "Bang!". Tomo cried out in shock, and then fell backwards.

So did the man across from her.

Tomo's fall turned into a backwards roll, and as she came around she leapt at the second man, whose weapon was focused on the girls instead of her. Her first strike knocked the weapon out of his hand, and the second strike was a fist to the face. Tomo landed atop the second man and sat on his chest.

The first man's fall was just that, a fall.

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Rémy Beaufort looked at his watch. Unfortunately, the only flight to Kyrzygstan left sometime tomorrow, so he would have to hang around for a little bit. For as much as people complained about wasting time, Rémy wished that he could waste a lot of it really quickly.

_At least I've got some spending money, but I probably shouldn't waste that too quickly. They won't let me back in without a bottle, or something._

He wandered the streets, looking for a good place to snag dinner.

_I wonder if those six men were even needed. She's just a little girl. The first two should have managed it by themselves._

_--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------_

The five girls stood in shock, trying their best to make sense of exactly what they had just been witness to.

"Tomo," Kagura said, "Tomo... that was awesome! That was more than awesome! That was... that was... really, really awesome!"

"Out of work actress, eh?" asked Yomi.

"Eheh, yeah, yeah, sorry about that. Damn, it feels good to speak the mother tongue again!" Tomo answered.

"Did you kill them?" Osaka asked.

"What? No, of course not. If I killed one of them, there'd be blood on your floor!"

"So... what exactly happened?" asked Chiyo, still shaking somewhat.

"Okay, I'll explain, but... You stop that... shivering. It's creepy. It's not like they actually did anything to you guys. Anyway, that gun I pulled on them, it's kind of a specialty weapon. It looks like an ordinary handgun, but fires in the opposite direction. If you're in a fight with someone, just drop that on the ground. Pretend they knocked it loose, or something, and they're liable to blast themselves. It doesn't fire real bullets, though. They're some kind of weird little bullets that send a shock throughout the body and induce unconciousness quickly. That thing isn't meant to be used that way, but sometimes you gotta improvise."

Sakaki motioned towards the second man. "This guy... Your punch, I was watching it. It didn't exactly hit with huge force. He can't be unconscious yet, unless he's got a pre-fractured glass jaw."

"Eheh, about that..." Tomo grinned, and raised her right hand. "This ring here... it's a taser, more or less. Sends a jolt through the body, induces unconsciousness. Really handy, because I'm not exactly the strongest girl in the world."

"If they're after me..." Chiyo said, quietly. "Then you guys should go away. It's dangerous."

"Actually, while BAD is after _you_, Chiyo, it's probably best for them to stick with us. The BAD guys aren't all bad, after all. They're not really much for harming random civilians, so if you stick with us we can at least try to protect you, and they'll be more wary of firing some kind of ranged stun weapon, lest they hit a bystander. I don't know if it's because they're good on the inside, or if they just don't want any bad publicity, but that's how it works. Therefore, we should stick with you. I have to, anyway, and I doubt you could get rid of the others even if you wanted to."

"Nope." chorused the other four.

"So," asked Yomi, "is someone coming to pick up Chiyo?"

"Yeah, but it'll be a few hours. We've got time to kill."

"Shouldn't we stay here?"

"They know where here is, so of course not. First, we tie these guys up, and then we go get dinner. I'm hungry. Somewhere in the big city... It'll be less likely for them to find us, after all."

"Oh! I know!" cried Osaka. "We can take _Bringin' Home The Bacon_ and get to the city really quick-like!"

"Not that... thing... please." Kagura said.

"But _Wings of Fate_ is all the way in the desert! Wait... we can take _Bacon_ to _Fate_ and then take _Fate_ to dinner!"

"Where exactly would we even land a plane in the big city?" asked Yomi.

"Osaka... we have a car." Chiyo pointed out.

"Oh. Right then, I'll drive."

"Why you? I bought the car..."

"But you still get stopped for license checks."

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Fifteen minutes later, the girls had all piled into Osaka and Chiyo's van.

"You're bringing _that_?" asked Tomo, indicating Sakaki's plastic suitcase.

"Yes." she answered, simply.

"It's all your fault, anyway," said Kagura.

"Wait, what did I do?"

"Why do you guys have a van?" asked Sakaki, deftly changing the subject. "It's not like you have any children, or anything."

"I'm sure we had a good reason for buying it at one point in time, but I can't remember it for the life of me," said Chiyo.

"Oh, that's... actually, I don't know what else to say about that."

"So Tomo... you weren't kidding about that secret agent thing, eh?" asked Yomi.

"No, I guess I wasn't."

"Of course she'd make it into Interpol," interjected Kagura, "Remember? When we were younger, she told us that she could do anything if she was properly motivated, so I'm not surprised that she of anyone was actually able to fulfill her childhood dream."

"Interpol? Hah! Interpol sucks."

"What?"

"Those guys at Interpol... They've mostly got desk jobs. Alert the world to so-and-so crisis, put a lockdown on someone's bank cards, identities, etcetera. They're glorified a lot in movies and books for some reason, but when I actually got in I found out that it wasn't for me, so I left."

"But..." started Kagura, "If not Interpol, then what?"

"Oh, it's some international organization. These guys call themselves **Low-Key** or something. I don't really care much about the details, but I do get to do all sorts of fun things."

"Like?"

"Classified information."

"But-!"

Yomi decided to change the subject yet again. "Chiyo, what kind of stuff have you and Osaka made together? Don't worry, I'm not going to steal trade secrets or anything,"

"Oh... you want a real example? Ahm... Oh! _Bringing Home The Bacon!_ That was one of ours!"

"I hate that thing. Hate it." said Kagura, needlessly.

"Right. Anyway, it wasn't planned or anything, nobody really asked us for a real invention, but sometimes you're just hit by inspiration, right? Well, Osaka was watching the news, and the news was, well, being the news. It was doing what it normally does, which is tell us about just how messed up the world is getting. Osaka decided then to crack a joke, saying that 'There's so much that people go through in this world simply because they find each other repulsive, eh? Wouldn't it be great if we could turn that into some kind of positive, useful force?' Suddenly, I was hit! Repulsion! A few weeks later, we'd actually developed a repulsor engine, although we still don't know how to make it cheap enough for mass production."

"What? That's it?"

"Oh, the engine itself works like this..." Chiyo said, and then launched into an explanation.

Yomi tried to understand her, failed, and decided to listen to a very pleasant string melody came on the radio at the time, and to be fair, the string melody was less confusing.

"Ah! Osaka! Osaka! Stop here! Right now!" cried Tomo.

"Hmm? Ah, alrigh', if you insist."

Osaka pulled the van over neatly and parked. For being so air-headed, the calmness with which she went through life made her a rather good driver. Chiyo appreciated this, although it's not known if any of the others noticed.

"Tomo... this is..." Chiyo started.

"A _JAPANESE RESTAURANT!" _yelled Yomi. "You're telling me that we flew all the way from Japan to America and rode a UFO through the desert in order to eat at a _JAPANESE_ restaurant?"

"You flew from Japan! I've had to deal with all this crazy international food! Hell, I don't think I've spoken half as much Japanese in the past year as I have today! I miss the motherland!"

Yomi glared at her friend, but remembered exactly how well arguing with Tomo worked. The girl simply did not give up, and Tomo also had a taser attatched to her ring finger on her right hand. "Fine, fine, you win."

"I win! Ha! Victory is mine! Yay!"

"Okay, okay, just calm down so that we can enter this damned restaurant without drawing any more attention than we already have."

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Rémy poked at his sushi.

_I don't get it. We've got forks... Why don't they give me a fork? These... damned.. chopsticks!_

He poked at his sushi some more. It was quickly falling apart inside the small bowl of soy sauce. Rémy considered simply sticking his hand in and grabbing the sushi, but decided against it.

_No way. That's not dignified. I'm a Frenchman, not some filthy slob!_

He stabbed at his fish a bit more, but some movement caught the corner of his eye.

_That's... the Mihama girl!_

He stared at the image of the girl, followed it up and checked it against a picture to make sure. Afterwards, he noticed that the girl's arms were interlocked with another's. Her arms were entwined with...

_Herself? She's dancing with herself? And... cabaret style?_

He looked past the line of dancing Chiyos and saw... another Chiyo. This one, however, was definitely real. No cabaret, no intertwined duplicates, just a girl, walking around with her friends.

Rémy couldn't believe his luck.

He pulled out his phone and dialed up the leader of the men he'd talked to earlier.

_Guess we really did need them after all._

His sushi was, by now, more soy sauce than anything else.

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**Author's Notes**: Yeah! It's an update! Woohah! Also, I don't know about you guys, but I'm absolutely terrible with chopsticks. Don't have the manual dexterity to use them. I stick something yummy in the soy sauce, but by the time I can actually fish it out it tastes like... Well, it tastes more like chewy soy sauce than anything else. Horrible. Absolutely horrible.

Ah, damn. I'm hungry.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this one. I started up another one too, Endeavors, but it takes place over the span of just one day, so don't think I'll forget this one. 


	7. Dreamer

Author's Note: **Bold** means that the characters are speaking english, but this only really applies to characters who try to speak both languages at certain times, like our girls and two of the new characters introduced in this chapter. Yeah, yeah.

Read and review, because writers need reviews. Tell us what sucks, tell us what's awesome, tell us what you thought was okay but could've been better. Information of all kinds can be made beneficial, and reviews are just that: Information.

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The sun rose unsteadily over the small nation of Darcia, as though it were not exactly confident about being there. To be fair, the small nation of Darcia had seen better days, and right now its tiny face was not the sort of place where celestial bodies would be pleased to play upon.

Darcia was a small nation among small nations. It was a country that could be described only as "meh." The nation wasn't exceptionally rich, but the Darcian people were not poverty stricken. The leaders weren't the greatest people in the world, but they were by no means despots. Darcia had friends, Darcia had enemies, Darcia was more or less entirely unremarkable as a country.

That is, it was unremarkable until only recently.

Recently, something had come into the sky which had the capacity to rival the sun in terms of unsteadiness. This rival was no celestial body, and to be fair, it would be pretty hard to mistake it for one, as it flew like a cross between a fledgling bird and a helicopter with a drunken pilot. It whirled about the sky, making it perfectly clear that it didn't belong and didn't care that it didn't belong. As if to punctuate its point, it did a flip and then a barrel roll for the sheer unadulterated joy of it.

This flying atrocity was, of course, none other than the BAD headquarters, soaring around the Darcian skies, looking for another small town from which to extort cheese, crackers, and booze.

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"Um... Tomo..."

"Yes, Sakaki?"

"This is a Japanese restaurant, but..."

"I thought I'd explained that! I've been stranded away from traces of the motherland for longer than I can remember, and if you're gonna try to keep me from it, then I'm going to punch you with my ring."

"It's not that. This isn't just a Japanese restaurant... it's a bar."

"Better!"

"Oh... dear... this is a sushi bar, isn't it?" whispered Chiyo.

"Yeah, why?" asked Sakaki.

"Because... you'll see."

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General Gomeran frowned at the sky. To be more specific, he frowned at what was in the sky.

_Miles and miles away from the Kyrzygstanian front, and still we've got no peace? No, of course not... we've got to deal with this... thing! It's an atrocity! _

He watched dejectedly as another missile arced into the sky, only to find its target doing a back-flip in an entirely different region. Frustrated, the missile self-destructed.

_We're never gonna hit that thing by aiming at it. It doesn't move with any rhyme or reason!_

There's a reason that Gomeran was placed far from the front lines of the battlefield. Gomeran was not exactly a stellar general. It would be a stretch, even, to call him a good general. While he wasn't particularly stupid, he was short-tempered, and things like that generally lead to things like this.

"To hell with aiming! Just fire a curtain of missiles at it! One of them's bound to hit!"

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Kaori Aida stood with her fellow astrophysicists on the ballroom floor of the flying hotel that had become the BAD headquarters. The love of astronomy which had existed since high school eventually translated itself into a physics degree and work at a minor scientific institution in southern Japan. While she had not exactly stood out in high school, in college she'd shown a tremendous aptitude and devotion to the field she loved. As a result, she had eventually distinguished herself enough that the BAD decided to send her an invitation.

She sipped her drink quietly, looking out the window expectantly, watching a small cloud.

The cloud spun madly and then raced out of the window.

That is to say, the BAD building spun madly and turned in an entirely new direction, likely for no reason.

Kaori sipped her drink again, which hadn't spilled. She glanced over at her colleagues and grinned. Their recently invented gravity generator was doing its job marvelously, and the members of BAD could never be happier. After all, drinks stayed where they were, nobody fell out of their impromptu thrones while brooding, and best of all the pilots didn't have to listen to anyone complaining about spilled drinks or spoiled moments.

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"So anyway, how's everyone been doin'... romance-wise?" asked a grinning Osaka.

Sakaki blushed slightly. "Ah, a little here and there, but nothing ever came of it."

"Nothing or nobody?"

"Ah, not much here either," Kagura added, saving Sakaki from the heat of the moment. "Too busy, what with the training and all." Kagura noted the sparkle in Osaka's eyes and decided to cut her off before she could make any embarrassing comments. "But what about you and Chiyo?"

"Ah, here an' there, y'know."

"Hey, don't sell yourself short, Osaka." started Chiyo. "There's something about Osaka that just seems to draw in a lot of people of all kinds. I'm not sure what it is, but she conducts herself with a kind of grace and elegance that's... I don't know, otherworldly."

"So then, does she have a boyfriend?" asked Yomi.

"Not at the moment. I think the fact that she lives with me, coupled with... er... Osaka's uniqueness of mind drives them off after a while."

"But what about you, Yomi?" asked Osaka, switching the subject away from her.

"I... ah... erm... Damnit! It's not fair that Tomo gets to skip out on this just because she went to the bathroom!"

"Skip out on what?" Tomo said with a grin, switching her cloak's display to a bright yellow happy face which was both frighteningly adorable and offensive to the eyes.

"Love life discussion!" shouted Osaka, reveling in the fact that aside from the restaurant owners, it was unlikely that anyone would understand their conversations.

"Oh, right. So, Yomi, what were you saying about yours?"

"Ah... erm... Wait, where's our waitress? We've been here for a while, haven't we?"

"Oh, that's right. I saw her coming on my way to the bathroom, so I took the liberty of ordering for you guys. Saves us all time, don'tcha think?"

"Tomo... what did you order?"

"Food! Delicious food!" she glanced at her friends a bit, then added, "And booze."

Their waitress arrived at that moment as though she were simply summoned for the convenience of some Tomo-favoring god, carrying hot plates filled with delicious food. She started setting down the various dishes at the table, smiling a polite little waitress's grin, and then reached over to the drinks and placed them down as well. She paused and looked at Chiyo for a few seconds.

"Are you sure you should be drinking this stuff? Can you show me an ID?"

Chiyo sighed and flashed her ID card.

"Oh! Ah, sorry, Doctor Mihama!"

The waitress left in a fluster, fearing for her tip.

"Before any of you ask," Chiyo said. "No, my love life isn't exactly flourishing. I suspect that it's for more or less the same reason as my being carded."

Osaka burst out in laughter. "Bwahahaha!"

"It's not that funny!"

"Ahahaha! It's not that, Chiyo, it's... it's... Ahahaha!"

"What is it? What's so funny?" asked Tomo.

"You don't want her to tell you." Chiyo replied.

"Bwahaha!"

"Sure I do! Osaka, what's so funny?"

"Sushi rolls! Bwaaahaha!"

"Sushi rolls?"

"Bwehehe," Osaka giggled, wiping the tears from her eyes. "It's a roll, right! Well, with a Japanese accent, we get the 'L' and 'R' sound mixed up, right? Sushi Lorr! Sushi Lore! It's a Fish Tale! You... you know... and these things are little fishy tails! Bwahahaha! They're... they're fish tail fish tales! Fwahahah!" Osaka concluded by pointing and laughing at her sushi some more. "Heheheh!"

"I think that those kind of jokes are funnier when they're intuitive." concluded Sakaki, prompting a nod from Kagura, Tomo, and Yomi.

"Bwehehehe!"

"This is why we can never return to the same Japanese restaurant. They'll probably spit in our food if we do." Chiyo concluded.

"Hey, in that case, don't leave a tip." added Tomo.

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Kaori grinned at the man running towards her. He was an engineer, and she'd learned a few things about engineers in her short stay at BAD. The eccentric engineers in the Dominion were quite fond of taking good ideas and then ratcheting them up a few notches. Kaori's good ideas were, of course, no exception.

"Hey, Kaorin-kun! Gotta see what with your invention done was!" he shouted in fairly mangled Japanese.

"**She love to see that, yes!**" she answered in equally mangled English.

"**Er, right. Anyway, would you like to come and watch?**" he asked her, switching back to English.

"Sure Leo, I would love to."

Leonardo was one of the few friends Kaori had actually made in BAD. He had run up to her one day and tried to speak some very mangled Japanese at her, and she laughed at him and decided to reply with her admittedly shoddy English. After all, engineers and physicists had little need to study foreign languages past high school. The meanings got through, of course, and they'd managed to forge a friendship that was entirely unrelated to work.

She followed the childlike engineer to the windows. He beckoned her closer, and so she went right up to them. He pointed down, and she followed his finger.

There was a curtain of missiles rising rapidly towards the BAD headquarters.

"Holy shit!" Kaori exclaimed.

"He's just a few long bombs, Kaorin-kun."

"That's not just a few missiles, Leo! That is a veritable wall of explosive doom, and we are in its path!"

Then, as she watched, the missiles began to curve somewhat away from the Headquarters. Then they curved somewhat more. After a while, they were spiraling in on a point, and as they collided with each other the missiles exploded in a brilliant but mostly harmless display.

"Leonardo... what just happened there?"

"**We started tinkering with one of your gravity generators, right? Yeah, fun things, those. So we messed around with them a lot. Cranked up the power a lot, and we had a lot of fun making things heavy for no reason, but after a while that got boring. So we started working on projection. These things can now project gravity somewhat. You know black holes, right? Well, just imagine that your machine can now create one of those things at, say, a hundred meters away from the Dominion Headquarters. Of course, it's not nearly as strong as a black hole, but it's substantial enough to deflect projectiles, and if we were feeling really mean, we could probably drop it on top of a plane or something.**"

"Run that by me again in Japanese."

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General Gomeran stared up at the brilliant fireball in the sky and watched it vanish even faster than it had appeared.

He considered it an apt metaphor for his military career.

Some of his more cynical colleagues would note that Gomeran never had a period in his career that could be considered brilliant.

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"I think is her eyesh," whispered a rather drunk Chiyo to Yomi.

"Her... eyes?" Yomi looked at the little prodigy sitting across from her, noting that with her small frame, it was likely that she didn't handle alcohol too well.

"Yah, yah. Y'look at 'em, and yeh suddenly notice that somthin's not totally righ abou' em. Ish like they're peerin' intah another worl', or somethin'. Shih, I betcha that they're tha reason that she'sh so good with tha boyz. Jush' looks at 'em with them big brown eysh, and bam! gotcha bish!"

"You mean Osaka, right?" Yomi whispered.

"Kashuga!"

"Gesundheit!"

"Yah, yah, whatever. Seeh, I'm somewha jealus of 'er. Sur, sur, I gots the brains of da operation, righ? Yeh'd say tha, but she's really tha brains. I jus' make stuff from good idears, but she's tha one wif the actual good idears! Ish that damnedable dreamin' thing!"

"But it's a good relationship, isn't it? That's what you told me."

"Yah, but shtill, it feelsh pretty bad to be dependen' on someone, even if they're alsho dependen' on me."

"Can you do anything about it?"

"I tried, Mizuhara. I tried har'. Shee, I gots this hat, y'know. 'cause she likes hats, so there mus' be somethin' about hats. You kin' extrapolate everything' in the univershe from any bit o' matter, right, becuz' by an' large matter's mosly made o' the same shtuff. So I puts a piece of cake in the hat's gizmos, and blammo! It shud help me shee the univershe. Not tha' it kin' create the univer' or anythin', buh it can enhance mah viewsh of it! It's like some kinda dream enhancer, or somethin'. I calls it Imagination Cake, y'see?"

"Did it work?"

"No."

"Oh."

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Rémy Beaufort poked at his sushi impatiently, because one can only idly play with food for so long before becoming impatient with it.

He watched the commotion several tables over, worrying that the girls would leave before his impromptu agents would arrive. His fears were confirmed when the six got up and started to leave.

_No!_

He watched the girls finish off their meals, the one with the cloak nearly blinding him with its ridiculous colors. One of them, one who stood out despite not having any terribly distinguishing features, started to accost nearby guests with a piece of sushi, waving it at them and saying things that Rémy could not hear.

_Where are you whelps?_

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**Author's Notes:** I have no idea what being drunk is like, so I'm simply trying to type as much like a 12 year-old MySpacer as possible. This may or may not be accurate.

Language jokes are haaard to come up with. Haaard. So hard that they should probably have a new word designed specifically to describe language jokes, only using hard consonant sounds to help define the difficulty of writing them. Something like Tigbigotet, except even harsher.

As for anyone reading both this fic and Endeavors (my god, I'm terrible at coming up with names), I'm going to alternate updates for them. One day I'll update this fic, and then the next day(assuming I'm a good little writer and keeping on schedule) I'll write an update for the other fic. This allows ideas to ferment in my mind, simply because after they've aged they tend to get a little zanier and more fun to write about.


	8. Takino's Focus

**Author's Note**: I don't own Azumanga Daioh, and I am powered by reviews! Rarargh! Without enough reviews I'll have to move on to a secondary power source, like... puppies! You wouldn't want me to power myself with puppies, would you?

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Five girls still sat at the table, but only three were currently conversing with each other. While Yomi desperately tried to get Chiyo coherent enough to pay for the meal and perhaps walk out of the door, Kagura, Tomo, and Sakaki chatted idly.

"So, Sakaki," started Kagura, watching Yomi and Chiyo with halfhearted interest, "whatever happened to Maya?"

"That's right!" shouted Tomo. "I still owe that cat one for scratching me!"

"I donated him to one of the more prestigious zoos in Japan."

"Whaat?" shouted a drunken Chiyo. "Yeh bin sooo happeh when that there cat wen' an' come inter yer life, and yah jus' give 'im away! ...was 'e a girl or a boy?"

Sakaki eyed the druken genius warily, and simply answered, "As I started my training to be a vet, I learned quite a lot about very many animals, but I also learned a lot about exactly how frail life is in general. There's simply no way that I could have given Maya the care he deserved, and so I decided that if I truly loved him, I'd have to let him go."

"So the old saying goes," Yomi said. "Anyway, now that Chiyo seems to be more or less conscious, we should probably be headed home." She paused for a second, eyeing the amount of money Chiyo was putting down and subtracting the amount she'd seen on the bill. "If you tip _that_ generously, I don't think it really matters how crazy you get, they'll be overjoyed to see you back here."

Tomo thought about this for a second. "Speaking of which, where's Osaka?" she asked.

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Six men ran down the street, racing towards a Japanese sushi bar. Casual observers would probably have assumed that they simply really, really, really wanted some raw fish and rice, but most would also figure that as great as sushi is, it usually doesn't warrant that much of a reaction, unless of course the sushi bar was an exceptionally fantastic place.

It is currently undetermined as to whether or not this is an effective means of advertisement.

It is generally accepted, however, that what the men did after they arrived at the sushi bar did not help business at all.

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Osaka grinned at the couple, the wry sort of grin that tells people things like, "I know something that you don't, but I'm going to rectify this problem shortly."

The couple grinned back, the uneasy sort of grin that tells people things like, "Hey, go the hell away."

Osaka was never that good at reading faces.

She waved a piece of sushi at them, laughing madly. "**Bwahah! You see this sushi here? He's got the greatest story ever, you know? I've... you... you've got to hear this! Fufufufu! I mean, there are a lot of fish tales here, but this guy's story, it takes the cake!**"

They stared.

"**You know this little guy here, this fish tale? Well, you see, he's been reincarnated. He's been reincarnated a lot of times, don't you know? Why? Maybe we all get reincarnated after a while, and we're just generally wrong with some of the more major religions. Maybe reincarnation isn't that special. But I digress! Hahahah! He's special, of course, and here I go, getting to the bit that makes this guy special! Heheh!**"

They smiled and nodded at the otherwise entirely calm-looking Japanese girl standing before them, waving a piece of sushi.

"**So anyway, this guy's a reincarnate, right? But the gag is, of course, that his reincarnations never really last long! I mean, he's lived a lot of lives, and he's probably done something to be really happy about each and every one, but for each and every single one he dies of some sort of unnatural cause! And you know what the biggest gag is? Huehuehuehue!"**

The man looked uneasily at the woman, who gave him the same look back, and the two of them conspired to focus their uneasy glares at the brown-eyed girl accosting them with fish. She didn't notice, of course.

"**Yeah! The biggest gag is that you killed him!**" shouted Osaka, pointing at the man and shouting it in a language that most could understand. "**You killed him each and every time! Jehehehehe! You know that ant you stepped on a while back? That was this guy! That deer you caught in the woods? Bingo! Kekekeke! That fish you're eating right now! Still more of this guy, although I wound up with some of him! Pwahahaha! You see, it's all you, man! Those leather boots you're wearing? He used to be a cow too!**"

"Hey! Osaka!" shouted Kagura. "Leave the nice people alone! We're going!"

"Hmm? Oh, alright then, I'm comin'." She turned to the couple and put the piece of sushi down on their table. "**I suppose that you and this little guy have a bit of catchin' up to do, right?**"

The man popped the piece of sushi in his mouth as he watched the strange girl run off to join her friends who, sans the smiling cloak and the drunken 15 year-old, looked pretty damned normal.

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Rémy Beaufort watched the girls get ready to leave. What used to be sushi sat in front of him, a very much mashed mess consisting of soy sauce, rice, fish, and assorted vegetables. He glanced down at it and figured that it was probably fitting for his mood at the moment, and considered simply slurping it all down as atonement for what he'd considered a failed opportunity.

He fingered the pistol in his pocket.

_If worse comes to worse, I'll just have to do it myself._

Rémy glanced up at the window and saw six men run by, presumably headed for the entrance. He breathed a sigh of relief and watched them as they barged in the restaurant looking very much like a group of armed thugs, which is exactly what they were.

The six men quickly found the six girls and, amongst them, their target.

"Hold it! Just give us the little one, and we won't hurt you!" shouted one.

Rémy watched, shocked, as first one girl dropped down, and then the other five fell.

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Tomo glanced at the six men standing across from her group of friends. She noted their firearms, and more importantly noted that the firearms were still holstered.

She glanced at her ring on her right hand and figured that it had enough juice left to knock out one, maybe two people.

Tomo grinned at the six men, the kind of grim grin that says, "I'm about to surprise you, and it's not going to be fun for either of us."

She dropped down and swept her foot around, tripping her friends.

"Stay down!" shouted Tomo, and suddenly she was in the midst of the six men.

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Chiyo suddenly found herself face to face with the floor. She was reasonably sure she'd been standing, but she also was reasonably sure that she couldn't be trusted in her current state of mind. She glanced up and watched the world flash from the off-white roof to a bright and offensive yellow color, and then the world flashed to Tomo's grinning face for a split second before returning to the ceiling color.

Chiyo considered getting up, but figured that the floor was a perfectly fine place as well.

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Yomi suddenly found herself on the floor.

_What the hell just happened here?_

"Stay down!" shouted Tomo.

Yomi glanced over to the source of the voice just in time to see the bright yellow happy face on her cloak flicker and vanish. It was replaced by a plethora of images, all random pictures of Tomo's grinning face. Yomi glanced up and took a few seconds to register which one was really her friend's face.

Yomi heard the crackle of electricity, and the man who Tomo had just punched didn't bother getting up again.

Tomo's foot lashed out suddenly, but the man she kicked out at caught her leg easily.

"Weak kick. You can't win." he said, simply.

Yomi watched as the grin vanished from Tomo's face, replaced by a look of grim determination. She quickly decided that Tomo without her perpetual grin was one of the most frightening things she had ever seen.

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The man held Tomo's leg in a strong arm, grinning at the girl. Her grin vanished, but before he could celebrate his victory, she kicked out again with her other leg. The motion looked like a single kick, but he could've sworn that he felt three distinct, simultaneous hits. He let go of the captive leg, shocked, and it zoomed away from him, only to come back from the other side of Tomo in a roundhouse kick that put him out of the fight as well.

A third man reached for his pistol, but Tomo dashed in. A fist to the gut and a second one to the wrist ended any hopes of drawing his firearm on the wildcat. A tripping kick knocked him over and sent the pistol skittering off far, far away from the fight. She leaped on his chest and jumped from there to the next man.

The fourth man was just now registering the fact that three of his comrades had been felled in the blink of an eye. Another blink, and Tomo was next to him as well. A backhand strike to the face brought him back to reality, and a knee to the gut reminded him of just how painful reality was. A third strike to the solar plexus sent him back out of reality.

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Kagura watched Tomo move amongst the men, knocking them down and out without any weaponry. The berserker was moving unnaturally fast, in a fashion that Kagura had never seen in all her years as an athlete. Tomo's face also lacked its nigh-constant, mirthful Cheshire grin. The athlete wasn't sure whether to cheer for Tomo or to mourn the loss of her endless smile.

Then Tomo started to slow down. As suddenly as she'd sped up and struck down seveal men, the wildcat had slowed down, looking incredibly fatigued. One of the men drew his pistol and shot at her. Tomo cried out and fell down.

He walked over to her, firearm still focused on the Tomo's prone figure.

_Why can't I move?_ thought Kagura to herself, angrily. _I can help! Why am I not helping? She's out there, maybe bleeding to death, and I'm just lying here... afraid! What's wrong with me?_

"Now now, boys, that's quite enough." said a pleasant voice, speaking with a slight French accent. "We at BAD are not murderers, so if you girls would just hand the young Mihama over, we'll be on our way and you can go get your friend here some much needed medical attention." Rémy motioned to the two men to grab Chiyo, smiling wanly the whole time.

_Move, damnit! Leap up and strike one of them, Kagura! Why... why are you just lying here?_

Kagura watched as the men picked up Chiyo's tiny figure and walked calmly out the door. They'd left the four men that Tomo had taken out sprawled out over the floor of the restaurant. Kagura willed her muscles to move, but her body stayed still, defiant, as she watched the men take one of her childhood friends away and leave another one bleeding on the ground.

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Sakaki ran over to Tomo, who was lying on the ground, not moving yet. She glanced behind her, noting that Yomi, Osaka, and Kagura were still sprawled on the ground.

_Probably still shocked at these events. It's... understandable, but something's got to be done about Tomo right now._

Sakaki turned Tomo over, searching for the wound. She pulled off the cloak, leaving Tomo with just her undergarments on underneath, along with a strange mechanical rig whose only purpose seemed to be to hold a group of miniature fans, though whether they were to make the cloak billow dramatically all the time or simply to keep Tomo cool, Sakaki was uncertain.

"Hey! I need that... you perv!" murmured Tomo, sounding extremely winded.

Sakaki ignored her, looking for the bullet wound. She found it, a small crater below Tomo's shoulder blade, and noted that there wasn't an exit wound. She opened her kit of medical supplies, musing to herself that this was slightly more serious than an injured puppy, and realized something.

_I don't have any of the tools that I would need to treat this..._

"Don't... don't worry, Tomo." Sakaki said, aiming more to reassure herself than Tomo, whose enamoring smile had returned. "You'll be fine, the ambulance will be here shortly, and, and... it'll be okay."

"No, you can't let those guys take me. **Low-key**'s already sending people to Chiyo's house to pick her up. They'll probably be a bit less pleased about picking up an injured agent instead of the person said agent was supposed to protect, but... everyone has to deal with disappointment sometimes. Just tell Osaka to drive us back home."

Sakaki nodded, and walked over to Kagura, Osaka, and Yomi. Tomo watched the conversation with slight interest.

Kagura walked over to Tomo's torso. She picked her up from the shoulders, Sakaki picked her up by the legs, and Yomi supported her torso. Osaka led the way to the van, silent.

"Hey there, Mizuhara! Don't think I can't tell when you're trying to cop a feel there, yeah? Watch your hands!"

Yomi simply looked down at her friend with sad eyes.

"Ah... damnit. Damnit! Ouch! Ahh! Watch how you're holding me, Kags! That hurts! I'm injured he... hey, wait! Don't cry! I didn't mean it! You're supposed to joke around and stuff, like, 'Hey knucklehead, cut that out!' Damnit, stop crying!"

The three taller girls had eventually managed to put Tomo in the van, lying down.

"Ha! Joke's on you guys! I could've walked!"

No response.

"Say, Sakaki, do you remember how when Maya scratched me, I cried and cried and cried, even though it was just a little scratch? Yeah, well, you know, I'm still bad at handling pain, so I'm just gonna go and pass out now, okay?" said Tomo, and she fell silent.

The wildcat closed her eyes and listened, hoping that someone would speak up, or something. She lay there testily, doing her best impression of an unconscious person. After a while, she tried to do a horrible impression of an unconscious person, hoping that one of her friends would call her on it.

No such luck. It was a long, quiet, and uncomfortable ride home.

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**Author's Note**: I hate these kinds of chapters. You know, the bit where everything has to be serious because it's really hard to make light of this kind of situation unless you're the bad guys. Why? 'cause then I've got to fight my natural urge to write silly things, or insert stuff that I like, like the little Agrajag bit earlier in this chapter. If y'think the quality's dropped somewhat, well, let's just say that this isn't my element. It's like me trying to write romance stories, or something. I can't take myself seriously enough.

In other news, I'm going to be gone for a good portion of next week, and I may or may not get in another update for Wanderers before I leave. If so, hey, good for me. If not, I can make a quip about having put several days' worth of thought into the chapter instead of, say, two.

Lastly, Rushia, your latest review may have been one of the most ego-boostastic reviews I've ever had the giddy pleasure to read. The fact that it was followed up by Emmalyn's (in the style of the late, great Douglas Adams, of course) made me melt into a little puddle of joy for a few days, which is why this one's slightly late. It's definitely appreciated on this end.


	9. Organization

I'm back from Vegas! I didn't win enough, so I still don't own Azumanga Daioh or most of the other things randomly jammed into this story. Sorry. Anyway, read and review. I am powered by reviews!

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Osaka's van pulled up to her house dejectedly, insofar as it is possible for something as expressionless as a van to look sullen and dejected. The world seemed to lose some of its sparkle as the automobile passed it by, and by the time the van had stopped, the world wasn't looking too great. Instead of a pleasant country house shrouded by beautiful foliage, Chiyo's home took on the aspect of a haunted house ensnared by gnarled trees. The moon was up that night, but did its job halfheartedly, giving off enough light to illuminate scary things but not enough light to assure anyone that they only looked scary.

It was a bad night all around.

"It's our home away from home." said Yomi, grimly.

"Hey, hear that, Tomo?" said Kagura. "Home! Food... and a bed, yeah?"

Silence.

"Tomo? Tomo? _Tomo?_"

Noting the panic on her friend's face, Sakaki decided to speak up. "She probably just passed out from the pain and blood loss. She wasn't joking about not being able to handle pain, I guess."

Yomi said nothing, electing instead to listen to Sakaki for instructions. Kagura followed suit, and Osaka may have done so as well, although with her it was pretty hard to tell most of the time.

Sakaki, the strong, silent type, was suddenly faced with the burden of people listening to her, waiting for her to say something, anything. Were she still a high-schooler, this moment would be a terrifying one. Years of experience as a vet, however, had at least taught her how to speak to people who were afraid.

_Then again, Tomo isn't exactly an injured kitten._

"Erm... right. Anyway, we should just get her into a bed, or something. Give her food and water if she wakes up, but otherwise just make sure she's comfortable. Her **Low-Key** comrades are coming to pick up Chiyo and such, right? They'll be more able to help her out with that wound."

With that said, Kagura, Sakaki, and Yomi lifted the still-silent Tomo while Osaka led them to her bedroom.

Yomi couldn't help but think that a silent Tomo was one of the most depressing things she'd run into in a long while.

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A small helicopter lifted off from a Tokyo airport, headed due west. For now, that was where its destination was, although the destination was fairly unpredictable.

Rémy Beaufort sat inside the helicopter with Chiyo Mihama. The thugs had long since gone, and the pilot couldn't hear what the two conversed about anyway. Chiyo'd sobered up somewhat, and so Beaufort decided that now would be a suitable time to try to sway her towards helping the BAD.

"Konnichiwa, Mihama-san." he started.

"**Speak to me in English. I wouldn't want to hear your ilk mangle my mother language, anyway.**"

"Well, if you insist."

There was a slight pause.

"**What are you waiting for, you silly Frenchman? You're the one making the proposal, so you should be leading the conversation, not me. If you're going to say something, say it.**"

"Correct again, Miss Mihama. You're quite intelligent."

"**So I've been told.**"

"We'd like for you to use your intelligence to help better the human race."

"**I'm already doing that. I am, after all, an inventor.**"

"Yes, well, we're an organization. The Belligerent Aerial Dominion, you know? Perhaps you've heard of us on the news. While our name does not exactly seem like that of a group of intellectuals, I'd like to assure you that we're all perfectly intelligent."

"**You're also all pirates, or so the news seems to say.**"

"An organization must feed itself, of course. But we're getting off the subject here."

"**What, you mean the people you've stolen food from aren't the subject? Well then, you should control the conversation to avoid such things.**"

"The point isn't the Darcian peoples. The point is that the Dominion is an organization that is simply a gigantic melting-pot of smart people from many different schools of thought. By bringing so many people together, we hope to create an environment that encourages the development of new ideas and fosters creativity in ways that individuals could not reach on their own. In short, we're looking to take a lot of people with good ideas, mix them together, and create great ideas."

"**I don't have great ideas. I'm simply a tinkerer. I don't dream.**"

"That's the thing! You see, if you join here, we'll come up with the ideas, and you can help make them real! It's a... beneficial relationship."

"**You didn't do much research before kidnapping me, did you? I've already got a source for ideas. Furthermore, I'm not exactly going to be very receptive towards your desires for me to join your organization. To be quite frank, abducting me isn't the best way to convince me to join your organization. If you were relying on your slick talk to sway me to your side, well, my friend, let's just say that you're not the most cunning linguist I've come across. I deal with an odder mind on a regular basis, so you'd better save yourself a bit of effort here and just give up while you're not terribly far behind.**"

"**Oh, and one final question... Why, exactly, would a charming group of intellectuals such as the ones that you supposedly represent decide to kidnap me and _then_ try to sway me? It's just... so... stupid!**"

"Well, we did send you an invitation."

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The invitation sat on Chiyo's dresser, which stood like a sentinel in its master's now-abandoned room. Someone entered, but the dresser made no move to defend.

Koyomi Mizuhara was a stranger in a strange land. On the largest scale, she was a Japanese woman wandering around in the United States of America, unfamiliar with both the land and the language, although her English wasn't terrible. On a much smaller scale, she was in Osaka and Chiyo's house, a place that she'd only been in for a few hours, if that. On a far more specific scale, she was wandering through what she had correctly deduced to be Chiyo Mihama's room, a room of the house which she had never explored before.

On the smallest, most intimate scale, she was lost and confused within her own mind. Her world had been perfectly normal, but she'd been dragged into a world of bizzare happenings and ridiculous events by the machinations of Chiyo Mihama, Ayumu Kasuga, and, to a lesser extent, Tomo Takino. Still, they were the machinations of her friends from high school, and the world, strange as it was, was still colored with the ever-present pleasant atmosphere from Yomi's childhood. It was a strange trip, but it was at least a very entertaining trip, until the most recent turn of events...

_It was fun... yes... but then that whole incident at the restaurant happened. Now... Now... Tomo's been shot, Osaka's stopped talking to us, and Chiyo's been taken off to god-knows-where._

Yomi rustled through the things in Chiyo's room somewhat aimlessly.

_Am I looking for anything? Maybe I just don't want to sit in that room with the others. It's so... dreary._

She picked up the invitation, and glanced at it.

_An invitation to... a party? But it's only for Chiyo. She wouldn't have abandoned Osaka for the Dominion. But... if this is why they kidnapped her... Maybe I shouldn't tell Osaka about this._

She continued to rustle through the drawers, thinking to herself.

_But she could have brought guests... I don't see why she wouldn't have just brought Osaka along with her. Even then, what would telling them about it help? It'll just depress everyone even more._

_Everyone must be feeling really down._

_Sakaki's beating herself up over not being able to do more. I can see it in her eyes, and I can see the same look in Kagura's eyes for some reason. Osaka hasn't said so much as a peep since Tomo was shot, and Tomo's still uncon-_

Yomi was shocked out of her train of thought by the item which she had just found in Chiyo's dresser.

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"**I hope you know, you silly Frenchman, that I'm not sober yet.**" muttered an irritable Chiyo.

"What do you mean?"

"**I mean that I'm still somewhat drunk. Not drunk enough anymore to be slurring my words or anything, but still drunk enough to have lowered inhibitions. So you see, instead of maintaining a polite demeanor I'd like to point out to you that you are not exactly my favorite person in the world right now. In fact, you're pretty goddamned low on the list.**"

"Oh? What's that mean to me? You're still just a little girl, after all."

"**Oh, I suppose I can't beat you up and hijack the helicopter in a daring escape or anything, but you see, I am ticked off at you and still somewhat tipsy. When the time comes, I will be trying my hardest to vomit all over you and your damned suit."**

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"So, Kaorin-kun, you will have been bring here what by?"

"**Ah, Leo Mr., group and my inventors were brought friends here invitation afterwards the gravity generator.**"

"**You know, I bet that if someone were listening in on us right now, they'd be very much offended at how badly we're mangling their languages.**"

"Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. Also, I'm not a boy, Leo. Kaori-chan, or something, not Kaorin-kun, which is just plain weird."

"**Yeah, well, your English was so mangled that I don't know exactly where to start correcting it.**"

"Strange, isn't it? I can usually get the gist of what you mean when you speak Japanese, but the details are usually all mussed up."

"**It's the same for your English. What a shame! I can go to Japan and understand those guys decently enough, but I stand no chance in hell of talking to them.**"

"Hey, at least English is used by most countries. Speaking English well and Japanese badly is far better than doing things the other way around."

"**You know, we're horribly off topic from the original discussion.**"

"Yeah, we are. What was it, again?"

Before Leo could respond, however, a man tapped Kaori on the shoulder.

"Ms. Aida? We'd just like to ask you something."

"**I glad answer!**"

"It best are speak Japanese and translate me, Kaori."

"Oh, fine."

"Do you remember a Chiyo Mihama from high school?" asked the man.

"Does her a Chiyo past-know col-"

"I got what he's saying, Leo. Yes, yes I do."

"**Hai. Er... she means 'Yes'.**"

"I... knew that." replied the messenger, looking somewhat annoyed. "In that case, would you mind talking to her when she arrives?"

"Chiyo's coming here? Tiny genius girl? Yeah, sure, I'd be glad to." replied Kaori.

"**She happy fun time much good!**"

"Leo, you're the one who speaks English."

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Kagura sat in the room, sullenly. Osaka and Sakaki did much the same, all three watching their friend who, for the most part, looked like she was sleeping peacefully on Osaka's bed, or at least, as peacefully as one can sleep with a bullet wound in their shoulder.

The door creaked open, and Yomi stood framed in the doorway, looking very much like a painting of a mysterious woman which befuddles the mind for reasons unknown.

Kagura, not being an art lover, didn't say anything. Osaka didn't say anything because she was currently in the state of not saying anything in general. Sakaki didn't say anything because she usually didn't say anything. Tomo, either unconscious or pretending to be, didn't say anything.

Yomi ignored the lack of a reaction to her entrance and walked over to her sleeping friend. She reached out to her and placed a device, which looked quite a bit like a cross between a fishbowl, a piece of cake, and a misguided robot, onto Tomo's head.

"Sweet dreams." said Yomi, simply. She could've sworn that a smile was slowly forming on Tomo's face, and Yomi hoped that it would be just as contagious as ever.

"Imagination cake! I... er... ah, I mean that... that's Chiyo's hat!" said Osaka, who chose to break her silence at this time.

As though sensing this, the doorbell rang, preventing Sakaki and Kagura from trying to figure out exactly what Yomi and Osaka were talking about. Osaka left her room, heading towards the doorway. Yomi, Kagura, and Sakaki waited with Tomo.

It was quiet again, but the atmosphere had changed in the room. The dreariness of the night had lifted somewhat, and Kagura almost felt like flashing a grin at her friends and starting up a conversation.

Before she could start, however, Osaka's panicked voice drifted back into the room from the doorway.

"What? Take me away?"

_No!_ thought Kagura. _I won't let them take any more of my friends!_

She got up and dashed out the door, ready to knock more than a few people out if necessary. She didn't look back and check, but Sakaki and Yomi had raced after her as well.

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**Author's Notes**

So I'm back, yeah. Oh, much fun, although I have to admit that this chapter isn't my favorite by any stretch. I don't really like writing this sort of thing, you know. The bits where everyone's sad, you know? It's okay though, I promise that we'll eventually dig our way out of this rut. Well, eventually.

Oh! The problem with going on a trip to a place where you're too young to do anything fun is that you have a lot of time to sit and think about random things, and not just irritable thoughts like "Why the hell is the DDR machine screwy at every arcade we go to?" and sometimes various ideas start leaping onto your head and forcing their way in. I've got a bunch that don't really fit with this story, but hey, hopefully they'll find a home. Who knows? I might even wind up writing a bunch of one-shots, but hopefully that doesn't mean that updates for _Wanderers_ slow down too much.

As always, reviews are appreciated and encourage me to write. I am powered by reviews and candy. Mostly reviews.


	10. Dawn

**Author's Note**: I don't own Azumanga Daioh. Read this thing here, then review it, becuase it will make me happy, and you need to be happy to write something that feels like Azumanga Daioh. If you're in a sour mood while writing, then you won't get the right feel and the story will be off! How sad is that! Terribly sad! To avoid sadness, write me reviews!

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Kagura dashed down the hall, towards the front door.

_You bastards shot Tomo and took Chiyo from us! I'm not letting you get Osaka too!_

Sakaki chased after Kagura, lagging behind only slightly.

_I... I couldn't help Tomo or Chiyo... but I can at least protect Osaka..._

Yomi raced after Sakaki and Kagura. Still, they seemed to be quite a bit faster than she was. Yomi wasn't much of a slouch, but Sakaki seemed to be a sort of savant as far as physical prowess went, and Kagura was a professional athlete. The two had made it to the front door long before Yomi did.

_They're coming for Osaka too?_ thought the bespectacled girl. _Why would they wait until now to come after her, and why didn't they just grab her at the restaurant? We were all just... cowering, anyway. Tomo was the only one willing to fight back, and they took her out... _

_And... Osaka sounded shocked, but she didn't seem to be anything more than surprised. There weren't any sounds of struggle, or anything..._

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"Aladdin?" asked Osaka, eyeing the man cautiously.

He grinned at her, as though he expected this kind of reaction, and replied, "Yes. So if you'd just get the Genie and come with us, then everything would be absolutely wonderf-"

"Keeeeyaaaah!" shouted Kagura, cutting him off.

He glanced up just in time to see her foot streaking out towards his face. He deflected it, but just barely. Kagura's momentum carried her toward the ground, and as she landed she swept her foot around towards the man's legs. He hopped backward, but just as he recovered from that she stood up and struck out with her fists. He parried desperately, but the athlete's rage-fueled strength was slowly but surely winning through.

Osaka watched all this happen in the blink of an eye. Before she could even begin to be surprised, Sakaki had picked her up and pulled her backwards, away from the fight and away from the stranger. The dreamer tried to protest, but Sakaki and Kagura didn't seem to be in the sort of mindset that made them easy to convince.

Yomi turned the corner and saw a rather adorable looking Sakaki and Osaka, huddled in a corner, staring out the door. The bespectacled girl dashed down the stairs to check on her friends, who for the most part seemed alright. She followed their gazes and saw an enraged Kagura launching a flurry of attacks which could scarcely be discerned as solitary kicks and punches at a very confused and somewhat frightened looking fellow.

Yomi looked back at Osaka and Sakaki, then glanced back to Kagura, who had now driven the man quite a distance out the front door, though she didn't seem to have any intention of stopping at that. She looked down at Osaka again.

"Osaka... who is that man?"

"Another one of those bad guys, of course." said Sakaki.

"_Osaka_, who is that man?"

"I... dunno." she replied. "He called me 'Aladdin.' He said that he needed me and the 'Genie' to come with him so that they could protect us."

"Who's this 'Genie'?"

"I dunno. He just asked me to come with him, even after I tried to explain to him that I'm neither Arabian or the owner of a pet monkey or flying carpet."

"Asked."

"Yeah."

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The man kept falling back. A weaker fighter can still last against a stronger opponent by giving up ground constantly, after all, and so he did. He kept stepping backwards, but the woman attacking him refused to tire.

To add to the confusion, she kept shouting things at him.

"You! You bastards shot Tomo!" she screamed. "Kidnapped Chiyo!" came with a kick aimed at his gut. "And you want Osaka too?" she asked, furious. Before he could get a word in edgewise, she struck out at him with her fists, quick as darts. "I won't let you! I might not have helped when you got Tomo, but if she's down, then someone has to step up!" she wailed. "I'll take you!"

He finally managed to catch one of her fists. As it turns out, that was a mistake. The tanned girl dragged him closer and then yanked him off of his feet with her sheer strength. As soon as he'd left the ground, she kneed him in the gut. As he dropped to the ground, she dropped on top of him.

"Tell me where Chiyo is!" she wailed, raising her fists to continue her savage beating.

He glanced up at her, ready to admit that he could barely understand Japanese when people were calmly speaking with him, let alone screaming at him and throwing a variety of punches, but someone else spoke up before he could.

"Oh man! Hot-blooded Kagura kicks immeasurable amounts of ass!" came a voice that was familiar to both.

"No... no way..." said Kagura, who'd suddenly forgotten entirely about wailing on the supposed kidnapper. She stared at the speaker, and her pin on the man slackened.

The person's figure was silhouetted against the rising sun, looking quite dramatic amongst the rest of the morning scenery.

He took full advantage of this and leapt to his feet, saluting her. "Good to see you, Wildcat, ma'am!"

"**Hey, Wally, at ease, eh? You know I hate all that stuff, and we don't really care for it much at Low Key anyway. So just... stop it.**"

"Yes ma'am."

"Tomo..." started Kagura.

"Awww, you cooled off so fast, Kags! It was kind of fun seeing you wail on Wally here, and now you have to get all serious on me? Well, I mean, you were probably serious while fighting him, but at least you were hot-blooded! Kagura, powered by rage! But alas, now it's all gone."

"Erm... Wildcat... ma'am... I understood most of that." said Wally.

"**Right. Sorry about that, but it did look really cool, Wally.**"

"...glad to have entertained you."

"Tomo..." said the athlete.

"Yes, Kagura?"

"Your boy's at attention. All of him."

"Hmm?" Tomo glanced over to Wally, then shot a quick glance at the only area Kagura could have meant. "Oh, ha! Should I be flattered, Kagura?"

"No, it's that..."

"Oh, shit! I'm still in my underwear! Damnit Kagura, you let me go this long without clothes?" Tomo raced towards Osaka's house, leaving Kagura and Wally alone.

"**Me... am... sorry. Lately have bad mood. You want come in house? No more fight, promise.**"

"I can kind of understand Japanese, mind you, I just don't speak it terribly well. Either way, I'll take you up on your offer... er... Kagura, was it?"

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Rémy Beaufort sighed heavily as he wandered down the hallway towards the room where the linguists usually stayed.

A charming voice called out to him. "That you, Rémy? Oh, who am I kidding, of course it is. I could tell that attention-seeking sigh from anywhere. What do you want to complain about today?"

"Hey, Lim, shut up. I've seriously had better days than this."

"Oh? What was your last assignment? Oh, I remember, you had to go recruit that Mihama girl, eh? What a rough assignment! Pick up a pretty young 20-something and try to convince her to join our organization with words. Oh, how difficult! Spare me your sobs, you jerk."

"Lim, you and I both know that if linguistic skills were really that useful in convincing pretty young 20-somethings into doing anything, we'd not even be in this line of work. Instead, we'd be using our linguistic abilities for things that are better left unmentioned.

"Don't you know it. Still, it's easier than my job. I had to do a diplomatic mission. You know, fly out to some country, talk with their leaders, and try to convince them to pledge allegiance to the dominion, or something. Well, you see, I had to fly to Zaire. Do you have any idea how annoyingly bad it is to even get into Zaire? You fly in, and you meet a customs official. He then proceeds to ignore you and ask for things that don't exist until you give him money, at which point he passes you to two customs officials. One of those guys tries to play nice and gives you cigarettes and beer, and the other one simply yells at you and takes away the cigarettes and beer. The net effect is that it slowly drives you insane until you relent and give them money. You do this with every customs official until you finally get into Zaire, and if you wanna get anything you brought into Zaire out of Zaire, you better be ready to go through another entirely different but just as horrible train of customs guys. And you know what? I did that. Zaire is now aligned with the BAD, although I don't see why we need them."

"Hey, I've got to do a diplomacy mission too."

"To _Kyrzygystan. _We already helped those guys by raiding Darcia in the war. You just have to show up and go 'Hey guys, I'm the BAD representative' and they'll be all over you! Hey, what's that smell?"

"Vomit."

"Too much to drink?"

"Not me."

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Chiyo Mihama was led by an assortment of people who didn't much look like military types to what she presumed was her prison.

"Please, reconsider joining up with BAD, Ms. Mihama." said one of them as they pushed her into a room and locked the door.

Chiyo scrabbled around for the light and eventually managed to flip it on.

_...This is a hell of a cushy prison._

It was a hotel room, filled with all the standard things that come with hotel rooms. Chiyo glanced around.

_I could try to fashion something to escape... a few parts from this and that and..._

She thought back to a conversation she'd had with Osaka and decided against that course of action. With nothing else available to her, Chiyo flopped herself down on the bed and turned on the television, waiting for something to happen.

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"Yeah, you see, it's really quite fascinating." said the grinning doctor.

"**Fascinating**..." replied Kaori.

"Fascinating!"

"**Really.**"

"Yep. You see, it's the most common disease in the world after tooth decay, and still it seems like nobody in the world has really heard of it."

"**Is... that... so.**"

"Yeah. You see, you get it from wandering around in unsanitary water, yeah? Those people in the poor countries who go wading around in the marshes are prime victims for it. Anyway, it's caused by these little snails."

"**Snails.**"

"Snails. The snails get on the person's feet, right? Well, I guess it's wrong to say the snails cause it, but the snails go on the person's feet and these little worms go from their hosts, the snails, to their new hosts, the people wading in the dirty water. The worms head right on in through the pores and enter the bloodstream rather quickly and start to multiply.

"**Worms...**"

"Yeah. You'll know when you have it because it's like a combination of the flu and diarrhea, except blood comes out from your wastes too and it burns like hell. It's really quite fascinating."

"**Fascinat-**"

"**Kaori! There's a problem with the gravity generator! You've got to come quick, or we'll crash!**" shouted Leo, grabbing the astrophysicist by the wrist and dragging her away.

"**Sorry! I go must!" **she shouted to the doctor.

"Thank you, Leo." she said. "I don't even know that guy's name, but... gah. He wouldn't let me leave! So... thank you!"

"Problem? Not! Hah!"

"I think that's enough for me. I'm gonna go to my room for a few hours, alright?"

**"Mind if I come with?**"

"**Leo! So enthusiastic!**"

"**No, no. I don't want to stay out here either, but if I go back to my room they'll think I'm being a hermit, as I do that all the time anyway. Forgive my vanity, Kaori!**"

"... Oh, hell. Okay, but if you try anything, I will find something sharp and I will cut you with it."

"Worry not!"

There weren't any defined days or nights on the BAD headquarters, as the pilots liked to simply go wherever they pleased. As a result, people were constantly coming and going from bed, though usually people would make friends with those who had similar sleeping schedules with them. Some of the more cautious doctorly types spoke up a lot about this, saying very many things about how harmful it was to not have a regular sleeping schedule and quoting a lot of very important studies and books, but eventually they settled for simply nagging everyone to get around 8 hours of sleep per 24 hour cycle, although it is unknown as to how many people actually managed to pull that off.

For Kaori, a Japanese native, it would be just after dawn, but her time on the HQ had long since obliterated any remnants of her biological clock. She reached out for her room's door, completely unaware of the fact that this would be the time when she would just be waking up and heading for school.

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**Author's Note**: Oooh. It's a new chapter. And I get to write some fun stuff for a change! Now in addition to Action Hero Tomo we've got Hot Blooded Kagura, which may or may not be the result of me playing too much Pokemon and activating Houndoom/Flareon's Flash Fire. HOOOT BLOOOOOOOODED! 

Oh, yeah. New stuff, eh? But it's the same old same old! You! Click that thing in the bottom left that says "write a review," write one, and then compliment me, or flame me, or act indifferent or something. I'm still powered by reviews! Oooah!

In all honesty, I'm sorry for the delay, but I got distracted with a lot of things. Like Pokemon. Gotta love Pokemon.


	11. Catching Up

**Author's Notes**: I don't own Azumanga Daioh. This chapter, by the by, is about twice as long as Wanderers chapters go, as a sort of apology for not updating it in... er... well, I don't know how long, which is in itself a sort of testament to how long it's been, yeah? Enjoy, guys.

Oh, and for later, yes, Chiyo really is talking that way. They're not me messing up bold tags or whatnot, she's just that amazingly fluent. Yeah, I'm jealous too.

Read, enjoy, and review. Preferably in that order, but sometimes reviews based entirely off of the minor "I don't own Azumanga Daioh" can be funny. Well, I guess they could. Personally, I've never had one.

That's not a suggestion to write one, mind you. Write a normal review.

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"Tomo... Tomo, how did you get outside?" asked Osaka, seemingly unfazed by the recent events. Osaka still seemed a little bit less cheerful than she normally was, but she no longer remained silent. Dawn's events had somewhat shaken her out of her mood.

"I just climbed out your window and hopped to the ground. I am, after all, a super-awesome secret agent, yeah? I'm like, action hero Tomo or something, Osaka. You can't underestimate me, 'cause if you do bad things will happen. For all you know, I could have robot legs or something!"

"You don't have robot legs..." muttered Yomi.

"Ah, well, I guess you're right, I don't really have robot legs. I can still make the jump from Osaka's roof to the ground, though. I mean, it's not really that hard, you know."

"You're still lying, Tomo. You can't make that jump unharmed, and I don't think there are any trees around here that you could have actually made the leap to. You can't have jumped."

Osaka, having wriggled free of Sakaki's grip, had started to drift away from the conversation. Sakaki considered grabbing Osaka again, but decided to let her go and listen to Tomo and Yomi's conversation.

"No, no, Yomi, you forget that I am a secret agent!"

"I didn't forget that."

"Well, then you underestimate me! I know all sorts of secret martial arts and techniques that allow me to survive those huge jumps and everything. You watch out, I can like, walk up trees and stuff! Defying gravity! I'm like, a freakin' ninja or something, Yomi. I bet I could walk up a tree if I was really devoted."

"You're not a ninja, and even then, ninjas didn't walk up trees."

Sakaki decided to comment at this point. "Tomo, even if you could make that jump under normal conditions, I'm going to have to remind you that you're not in normal condition. You've got a bullet wound in your shoulder and you just spent the night unconscious. You couldn't have made that jump."

Kagura and Wally arrived at the door at about this time, only to hear Tomo proudly saying, "A-ha! I got you there, Sakaki! You see, I wasn't really unconscious at all! I was just lying there, pretending to be unconscious! I had all of you fooled! Fooled! Ha-ha!"

"Tomo, that's not good at all. You really had us worried there," said Kagura, disapprovingly.

"Fooled you! Ha-ha! Fools, fools! Fooled the fools! Tomo's victorious!"

"Tomo," growled Yomi, "I swear to whatever deity is watching us right now, if you weren't injured already, you would be in a few seconds."

Tomo glanced at her friend and decided that it'd probably be best to not push her too far at the moment. "Oh, well, fine then, fine. You still have to admit, though, that I'm pretty good at it. I mean, I was worried and all, of course, that Sakaki would come in and check closer or something, but she and Kagura just settled for sitting in the room quietly and trying to see who could be the saddest. Well, I almost lost it for a second there, when Yomi tried to put that silly contraption on my head, but I managed to stifle it at just a grin. Still didn't get caught. It probably helped that Wally showed up at that point in time and you all abandoned me in the room to go see what was going on. Some caring friends you are."

"Er, speaking of which, this guy here," said Kagura, motioning towards the rather bruised boy, "is Wally. I tried to kick the crap out of him for a bit there."

Wally interrupted Kagura. "Tried? I'd say you succeeded handily, Miss... er..."

"Kagura. Anyway, I tried, but I was mistaken. Wally's a good guy, more or less."

"Nice to meet you," said Sakaki and Yomi in unison, bowing slightly to the young, green-haired boy.

"Yes, I'm very pleased to meet you as well... er..."

"Sakaki's the tall one, and Yomi's the one with the glasses," said Tomo, grinning. "Well, Wally, I didn't really get a good look earlier, but man, Kagura really seems to have done a number on ya." Tomo glanced over to her friends, widening her grin in a way that seemed to defy human anatomy, and continued on, "Hot-blooded Kagura kicks unholy amounts of ass, guys. When Yomi snaps it's painful, but I can't begin to wonder what'd happen if you made Kagura really, really mad."

Everyone stared at Tomo for a second, and a fragile silence hung in the air.

Tomo broke it again. "Actually, I kind of want to find out. Anyway, Wally, these are the Wildcat's friends from high school. Hah! Then again, who knows if I can really call them friends? The life of a secret agent is dangerous business, after all, and one can't afford to make too many personal attachments! Besides, some friends they are, eh? I get shot, and they strip me of everything but my underwear and leave me in a room upstairs! And then afterwards, they all abandon me in that room when you show up? It's a good thing I've got a heart as wide as the ocean, or I'd never be able to forgive these fools!"

"Ahm, Wildcat, ma'am, just a few things..." said Wally, staring at his feet.

"Yes?"

"Er... ah... Where are Aladdin and the Genie? That's why I'm here, after all."

"Oh... ah, about that... The Genie... she... er..."

"I found it!" shouted Osaka, whose voice was coming from a direction that was hard to discern. "Yeah, totally found it!"

"Found what?" asked Yomi.

"My hat!" shouted Osaka, floating over the roof of the house and slowly landing next to the throng of people. "It was just sitting outside, next to the house, just below Tomo's window."

"Oh, so that's how she did it..." muttered Yomi, staring at the contraption whose wings suddenly reminded her strongly of her missing friend. Yomi felt a twinge of sadness, but was determined to not let it conquer her.

"Well, there's Aladdin," said Wally. "Now... the Genie?"

"Not to interrupt your conversation about what I'm sure is quite important," said Kagura, "but I'd like to point out right now that Tomo is still in her underwear."

"Waugh! You guys let me just stand out here and chat in my underwear! You're lucky this is a lonely cottage, or we'd be arrested for indecent, albeit quite sexy, exposure!" shouted Tomo. She ran inside, frantically shouting "My cloak! Where's my cloak?"

"It's in your room!" shouted Sakaki.

"Er, righ', righ'. Anyway, Oddish, I think Tomo might be a while." Osaka didn't miss a beat, and still treated the situation as though nothing were out of the ordinary, despite having just flown over the roof of her house with a hat that looked like a winged colander.

"Er... Miss Aladdin... my name isn't Oddish... it's Wally."

"Oh, well, you were callin' me Aladdin, so I figured I'd give you a name too. My name's Aladdin, by the by. It ain't Osaka, either, but I prefer that over Aladdin, personally."

"Sorry, Al... er... Osaka. Aladdin's just your codename."

Kagura was awestruck. "Codename? Osaka's got a codename? So are you like, a secret agent too, or something? You've gotta give me details, or I'll have to wail on you again, Wally!"

"Erm... it's a long story."

"Oh, well, if we gotta listen to long stories, we migh'swell be sitting down, yeah?" asked Osaka. "Yeah, I think we should. Let's all go inside, okay? Tomo should be done by now anyway."

Osaka grinned at all of her friends and gestured towards the front door.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"**First in you.**"

"Woman first custom yes?"

"**Leo, room mine, rules mine.**"

"**Fine, fine.**"

Kaori reached over and opened the door, which creaked mightily despite being a fancy hotel door. She glanced down the short hallway to her room and sighed with slight relief. There's a kind of calming feeling that everyone experiences when they return to what they consider home at the time, even if home at the time is a room in a randomly flying, flipping, armed hotel.

Leo glanced over to Kaori and grinned, then walked down the hallway. Kaori followed behind him, reveling in the reprieve that the room provided from the normally hectic party on the hotel's bottom floors.

Suddenly, a lamp hit Leo in the head, shattering fantastically. Kaori barely had time to yelp in surprise when a figure turned the corner and dashed towards her. Before it had made three steps towards Kaorin, it froze.

"...Kaorin?" said the voice, tugging at the edges of memory. It was familiar, but Kaori couldn't quite place the voice. If only she could see who it was...

She reached over and flipped on the light. With that simple maneuver, the foggy haze of her mind cleared and she suddenly realized who had just smashed a lamp on Leo's head.

"C...Chiyo? Chiyo, what are you... doing here? What... what are you doing in my room, actually?"

"Kaorin... where exactly is here?"

"Exactly... well, in relation to the world, I don't know. We were just over Darcia a while ago, but we've floated around a bit since then. We were near Japan for a little bit, but I think we've gone over the Pacific since then. We might've even been in U.S. airspace for a little while."

"This place... moves? It's too big to be any aircraft that I've ever seen... unless..."

"**Belligerent Aerial Dominion headquarters.**"

Chiyo glanced down at the person who she'd clobbered with the lamp, and suddenly realized something.

"**You're a boy!**"

"**Yes, er, well, I was, last time I checked, anyway.**"

Chiyo grinned and glanced over to Kaori. "Kaorin... you and... a boy? Going together, presumably alone... to your room? Why I... Well, I'll just say that I'm really surprised, you know? I mean, back then, even I thought you... well, you know? I mean, I never really realized that during school, but I did put it together a few years later. I mean, from all that, I always had you pegged as... er... well, you know, I just wouldn't have had you bringing a boy to your room...alone, you know?"

"It's not like that, Chiyo! Leo and I are friends, yeah? He's just... j... uh..."

"**Hanging out! Kaori and I, we're just hanging out, you know? I mean, hold on for a second, yeah? Let me explain it, okay?**"

"**Just explain it, er... Leo, was it? Yeah, you don't need to ask me to let you explain, just start explaining.**"

"**How do you do that?**"

"Chiyo's a genius, Leo. She can totally do that."

"**Do what?**" asked Chiyo, facing Leo. She then turned to Kaori and asked her as well. "Do what?"

"It!" shouted Leo, in broken Japanese. "He switch the word of Japan so simple!"

"**Chiyo, us awed by double speak so well languages! Tremendous!" **said Kaori, with broken English.

"Er... well... everyone's good at certain things, yeah? And I was raised in Japan and moved to America, so... it'd be pretty shameful for me to not be fluent in both languages. **I was born in Japan and moved to America, Leo, so it'd be really sad for me to not know both languages.**"

"Oh, just pick a language," said Kaori. "We can both understand both languages, kind of, it's just that we're not so good at speaking them."

"**Yeah. To be fair though, I'm an engineer and she's a physicist. Math, yeah, English, hell no.**"

"Kaori, you're a physicist?"

"Erm, yeah Chiyo, I am."

"**Oh! That's so amazing!**" said Chiyo. "**Er, oh, sorry! Leo, you were going to explain something about the Dominon?**"

"**Well, okay, you know about the Belligerent Aerial Dominion, yeah? Well, you know about us because we're on the news a lot, but I don't think we really get much fair play in the media. Oh well, you can't really do much about it, yeah?**

**Anyway, we at the Dominion are simply a bunch of people who are really rather intelligent. You see, the Dominion is essentially, at its core, a grand gathering of geniuses. Its purpose is to simply be a big mishmash of wonderful minds, all sharing their ideas and creating something wonderful for the results. Not to be a braggart or anything, but everyone in the Dominion is a genius in one way or another.**"

"Kaori, you're a genius?" asked Chiyo. "Ah! I mean, er, well, I don't mean to be rude, but... You're a genius? You weren't stupid or anything in high school, but... Actually, now that I think about it, your grades were definitely decent at least, but you never really struck me as a _genius_, you know?"

"Oh, yeah, I know Chiyo, I know. I got out of high school with pretty average grades, but my mother pushed me towards school. She said that I was smarter than I thought and that I should keep trying despite not exactly being a shining star during high school. Well, I went to a mediocre college, but I excelled there. I don't know if it was the college life or something, but I just did... well, stellar in school."

"Oh, I can guess as to why that happened," said Chiyo.

"Really?"

"Oh yeah. I bet it's because there weren't certain tall, mysterious, large-breasted, incredibly cool distractions at your college."

"C-...Chi-...Chiyo." Kaori said, glancing over at Leo.

"**Large breasted?**" asked Leo.

"Anyway, going on, I went to a graduate school and studied with some other stellar individuals and, after some hard work, I did something outstanding. We made a gravity generator, and it was a fairly big splash in the community for a while. I mean, it's not exactly fine-tuned yet, so we can't use it for much yet, but the simple fact that we generated gravity separate from mass was amazing."

"**Large breasted?**" asked Leo.

"Leo. Forget that for now, yeah? Just ignore it."

"**So, Chiyo, if I'm interpreting your Japanese correctly, then... Oh, hey, I wouldn't really have had much of a chance with Kaori even if I was trying to put the moves on her, yeah?**"

Chiyo stared at Leo, but didn't comment.

Kaorin glared at Leo.

"**Erm... right. So we're just a... a... big group of geniuses here. And so I'm assuming you got your invitation and such, yeah Chiyo? Another linguist, or something?**"

"Actually..."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Actually, Kagura... I... er... I kind of don't have a codename, you know? I'm just Wally."

"Oh. Well, that's alright, I guess."

"Yeah, sorry to disappoint you. Oh, here's Tomo. Tomo's got a codename, at least. She's the Wildcat."

"Oh! Cool, Tomo! Obvious, I guess, but cool."

"Er, Tomo, where is the Genie?"

"Kidnapped." answered Tomo, matter-of-factly.

"Kidnapped? By BAD? With you here?"

"Yeah. Incase you couldn't tell, that's where I got this here bullet hole."

"Oh."

"Yeah, bad stuff."

"HOW CAN YOU BOTH BE SO CALM ABOUT THIS?" shouted Yomi, exasperated. "Chiyo's been kidnapped, and you're discussing it like it's a change in the weather? What's wrong with this **Low Key**? Hell, Wally's just sitting there, after he's heard news of Tomo's bullet wound, and he's shrugging it off like it's nothing!"

"Oh, well, I've got some of Caduceus's stuff in the jet, and, well, the Wraith actually knows a few things about medicine, so with those two combined the bullet hole shouldn't be much of a problem."

"The Wraith is here?" asked Tomo.

"No, she's in Zaire. We've got to pick her up."

"Oh. By the by, Yomi," said Tomo, "Chiyo being kidnaped is indeed a bad thing. It means I've failed on my mission's first objective, yeah. But hey, we've got a backup plan, and that's simply to eventually rescue Chiyo from the clutches of the BAD guys. Being sad about it doesn't help at all."

Osaka, sitting calmly and listening to the others talk, took those words to heart.

"You... you have a point, Tomo. Still, it doesn't feel right to be so... calm about it."

"Well, you could get Kagura all hot-blooded again and send her in a general direction. She'll destroy everything in her path and hey, maybe BAD will be in that direction."

Kagura defended herself, although she did seem rather proud about impressing her friend. "I'm not _that_ bad."

"Well, Wildcat, we should get going." said wally. "The Wraith doesn't like being late, yeah? Ala... er... Osaka, let's go."

"What about the rest of us?" asked Yomi.

"Oh, well, what do you guys want to do?" asked Tomo.

"Come with you, of course." said Kagura.

"Can we... er... even do that?" asked Wally.

"You brought that transport jet, right? Of course you did, we needed to take passengers. Well, they can easily fit in there. We've got to take Osaka, as that was part of our mission. Sakaki's a medical person, so she can treat me and we won't need to trouble the wraith. Kagura's an athlete, and I bet that if we give her something dangerous she can point it at bad guys and make their day pretty damned bad too. On that note, don't give Osaka anything dangerous. Yomi's not exceptional in anything, but she can probably cause some random damage, and on top of that she's very normal. It's important to have people who can pass off as normal on occasion, you know."

"We might get in trouble, Tomo."

"Oh, don't worry. Just say I pulled rank on you."

"But you didn't."

"I am now. Everyone in the jet." commanded Tomo, walking out of the door purposefully.

Wally sighed, and the four girls headed outside, following Tomo. Suddenly, she halted. They all followed suit.

"Er... Wally, where is the jet?"

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"Actually..." said Chiyo, and then stopped.

_Should I tell them that I've been kidnaped? What would it help? We're, if I remember the news correctly, in a giant floating building that's actually armed and occasionally robs small countries. We... er... well, I don't think they could really help me much right now. Actually, I think it would just cause them some unneeded grief._

_Yeah, I'll just keep quiet about it for now._

"Actually... Kaorin, do you remember Osaka and the others from school? Well, I mean I'm positive you'd remember Miss Sakaki, of course, but what about the others?"

"**Is Miss Sakaki tall, mysterious, and large-chested?**" asked Leo.

"Quiet, Leo. Yes, I remember them, somewhat. Why do you ask?"

_Hm. So far so good, but they might get suspicious about the rapid change of subject. I should try to distract them somehow._

"**Well, you know, Osaka and I are living together now. Well, we were living together until I came here, anyway.**"

"Living together? You and Osaka?" _Whaaaaat? No way... Chiyo and Osaka... are they..._ thought Kaorin, shocked.

"**Ha ha ha, oh wow! Was everyone in your little circle of friends... you know, into everyone in your little circle of friends or what, Kaorin? I mean, yeah, sure, I've read some stories like that, and a couple dirty Japanese comics, but... I never thought that they'd have some actual grounding in real life! Well, I guess that I don't really have to regret not asking many girls out during high school, eh?**"

Kaorin glared at Leo. _Leo... I was thinking something like that, but you don't have to just come out and say it like that! Still, at least this'll force Chiyo to tell me what I want._

"Oh, no, no, it's not like that at all. Osaka and I are partners, not... er... well, partners. We're inventors, you know. She insists that I put my name on all the patents, though. She didn't want her parents in Japan to find out what she was doing for some reason or the other... I guess that's why I got an invite here and she didn't. I was sad to go, but I figure I can always come back. In the meantime, we've got enough money saved up that she can live comfortably for a while."

"Chiyo... are you sure she won't be mad?"

"**I'm sure she won't be mad.**"

"**Stop doing that.**" said Leo. "**I know you can speak both English and Japanese fluently, but you don't have to switch between them just to show off to us poor non-linguists.**"

"I'm not a linguist."

"No, she's just a little rich genius girl, Leo. Well, putting it that way makes you want to punch her, but then you look at her and, well, she's so damned adorable, it just makes you lose all intent of actually harming her."

"**Right. Well, with that settled,**" Chiyo faked a yawn. "I'm actually rather tired, so... er... I'd like to go to bed. I can take the couch, since I'm little, yeah? **Leo and Kaorin, you two can share the bed.**"

"**We already explained...**" said Leo.

"It's not like that." finished Kaorin. "Chiyo, girls can share the bed. Leo can sleep on the couch, or he can go back to his own room."

"Here remain I!"

"That broken Japanese/English thing you guys, do, it's actually kind of cute," said Chiyo. "**Be glad that I'm not an actual linguist. I'd probably get all anal on you about... well, there's far too many things to complain about.**" With that, Chiyo settled onto one side of the bed and tried to go to sleep.

_How long will I have to stay here? _she thought to herself.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wally's yelled back to the passengers from the cockpit. "Hey guys, we're going to be arriving in roughly 23 minutes. The Wraith should get on the plane shortly after that, and we can just get the hell out of Zaire. No slight against Africa, really, but I'd be happier in **Low Key **HQ."

Yomi glanced around at the people in the jet, feeling somewhat nervous. There were far too many things that simply didn't match up with how she felt that the real world worked. Things that just shouldn't have happened. They were bothering her. Sure, life was usually a little odd with her group of friends, but she couldn't help but feel that this whole thing was something of a bad idea, and that she needed to figure out exactly what the situation was before it got too bad.

"Osaka, out of curiosity... we left from somewhere around California, right? Mediterranean climate, warm, nice weather, had to be California, yeah?"

"Yeah, more or less."

"And we flew to Zaire, which is in the middle of Africa, right Tomo?"

"Huh?"

"...wrong person. Right Wally?"

"Yeah."

"Zaire is on the other side of the world from California, more or less, so please, could someone just tell me, HOW THE HELL DID WE GET FROM CALIFORNIA TO ZAIRE IN ABOUT TWO HOURS?"

"**I... uh... don't understand your Japanese so well when you scream it, Yomi.**"

"Oh, the **Low Key **jet is fast. It's really fast. It's moving at Mach somethingreallyhigh, Yomi. It's way faster than any regular plane." answered Tomo.

"Okay then, another question. We're landing this plane in Zaire, right? And we've got to pick up this 'Wraith' person, yeah? Why does a secret agency have to use civilian airports?"

"Who said we were using civilian airports?" asked Wally. "She's in the capital, Kinshasa. We'll just pick her up from there."

"How do you land a jet in a city without anyone noticing?"

"We're not going to land it in the city. We're gonna land it in the park."

"A park."

"Don't worry, Yomi," said Tomo. "Wally's a very good pilot."

"Still, this jet is large and silvery. If you land it in a bright green park, somebody's going to notice."

"Oh, no," said Tomo. "This jet is covered in the same flexible screen that my cloak is made out of. It's not as sophisticated, but this jet is currently colored sky-blue. We'll just land it in the park and color it like trees or something. Frankly, the people of Kinshasa have bigger things to worry about than a random jet landing in the park. In fact, the park itself isn' exactly heavily populated. Nobody'll notice the jet unless they know exactly what they're looking for, Yomi."

"And the only one who knows would be the Wraith, I presume."

"Yep. By the by, Sakaki, thanks for patching up my shoulder."

"It's those Caduceus tools. That gel, for example, is amazing... The needle and the thread... they're like nothing I've ever worked with before. It's almost like a doctor's dream come true! Your kit even has a surgical laser, and it's... it's... all amazing!"

Tomo simply grinned at Sakaki.

"We're landing now," said Wally. "Just hang around for a bit, the Wraith is on her way."

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A woman walked out of the capitol building in Kinshasa, looking neither cheerful nor disappointed. She seemed, in fact, to simply have an average look about herself. This woman wasn't striking in any fashion. She carried a briefcase, but the briefcase was painfully standard. Within a five-mile radius, you could probably find more than twenty matches for her briefcase.

Her clothes were likewise average. She wandered down the street as though she knew where she was going, but she didn't walk in any significant fashion. She simply walked as though she were heading back and forth from work, or from school, or from some other equally mundane location.

This woman walked past the military police stationed in Kinshasa. Her manner of dress was not the kind that induced a stare or a catcall, but it didn't strike anyone as exceedingly businesslike or anything. In short, it was the kind of attire that you glanced at and forgot a few seconds later.

In her entirety, the woman was the kind of person who you glanced at and forgot a fraction of a second later.This is exactly what the military police did, which is quite a shame because in her briefcase this woman held important documents for the nation of Zaire and the Dominion.

She walked in the middle of an empty park, and somehow she didn't stick out. People couldn't have given her a second glance even if they were looking for her. Given the amount of time that had passed in the capitol building, people undoubtedly were looking for her. Some of them had probably even looked at her, but didn't notice.

The girl reached over to a tree and pulled it open, then stepped inside. Had anyone been watching her, this would have still struck them as being entirely normal and ordinary, despite all evidence to the contrary.

She walked into the **Low Key** jet and took a seat next to Yomi, and somehow, it didn't strike Yomi, Kagura, or Sakaki as important or special. Everything simply seemed... average.

For Osaka, of course, things simply didn't work that way. "You! You're... You're..."

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**Author's Notes**: Yah! It's twice as long as a normal Wanderers chapter, easily! Also, we've got a new character! I wonder who she is? Wally also gets a bit more character development, and... well, stuff happens all around. You should know, you read it, right? Yeah, you did. So... you know, write a review.

Oh, hey, there's an interesting thought. This is the first chapter in which Rémy hasn't been mentioned since the chapter in which he was introduced. What's our cunning linguist up to right now? Who knows? Maybe he's just washing vomit off of his shirt. Vomit sucks. Well, he could be going to Kyrzygystan, but hey, I don't even know where Kyrzygystan is, and you know what? Kyrzygystan has too many consonants for my tastes. It just feels wrong, man. Wrong.

Anyway, I don't actually know anything about Kinshasa, so if it doesn't actually have a capitol building, or a pleasant park inside it, well, tough cookies. The Kinshasa of Wanderers is then a more pleasant place than the Kinshasa of the real world, despite having Military Police hanging around and having military secrets being stolen and such. Ooh.

Once more, I'm really, really sorry about the delay between the last update and this one, but I got distracted by stuff. Well, that's no excuse really, but that's why I'm actually posting an update at 10:46 my time. I usually write with the sun, but I've been distracted by all sorts of things. DDR, Castlevania: SOTN(yeah, it's taken me this long to actually play it), Pokémon, and various other things.

An interesting note: This story actually forced me to learn the ALT code for the é in Rémy and Pokémon, so now I can write Pokémon properly! Woah! Cool, yeah?

So anyway, now that you've slogged through all of my damnedable author's notes rambling, I'd really quite like it if you clicked that little dinger in the bottom left that says "Write a Review" and then proceeded to do so. Reviews make me happy, you know? And a happy Lire writes more, so keep me cheerful! It'll benefit us both.


	12. Secrets and Plans

**Author's Note**: I don't own Azumanga Daioh or Kyrzygstan. Not in the slightest. We're back to regular-sized chapters, by the by.

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"You're... you're...!" said Osaka, shocked.

The woman, who had simply pulled papers out of her briefcase and started poring through them, glanced up at Osaka. She gave Osaka a scrutinizing stare, watching her as if she were simply a specimen for some scientific study. The two locked eyes for a few more moments, and then the woman smiled slightly.

"Hello, Aladdin. I'm the Wraith." she said.

"I'm not Aladdin. I'm not Osaka either, but feel free to call me that."

The Wraith turned towards Tomo, who grinned at her. "Should we let her do that, Wildcat?"

"Well, if anyone's eavesdropping on us, it's not like they're gonna figure out that Aladdin actually goes by the name of a Japanese city for some reason."

"True."

"So feel free to call her Osak-"

"A-ha!" shouted Osaka. "That's who you are, Wraith!"

"I'm not Osaka, if that's what you mean."

"No, you're the cunning, coy, and cryptic Chihiro!"

"A... er... Wildcat...?"

Tomo looked over to the Wraith and grinned. "Oh, stuff it, Chihiro. Relax. We're on the **Low Key** jet and we just picked you up from the middle of Zaire. You don't have anything to worry about, really. Feel free to call her Ayumu Kasuga, call that one Koyomi Mizuhara, and... well, you get the point, right? Sakaki and Kagura are hanging out over there too."

"This is ridiculous."

"I think it's pretty cool, myself. Don't question coincidence, Chihiro! Deal with what happens!"

"Er, right. By the by, where's the Ge... er, Chiyo?"

"Yeah, er, it didn't all go according to plan. To make a very long, dull story short and devoid of detail, I got shot and the Dominion got away with a drunken Chiyo. Wally showed up and we came to go grab you."

"You got shot? Even with the touch?"

"I used the touch, but there were too many of them. So now we've got to rescue the Genie, because that's what we do, right?"

"Yeah, I guess."

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Kaori woke up groggily and was terribly surprised to find someone in bed with her. She yelped out of surprise, stifled it, rolled out of bed, and fell on the floor. The startled girl rolled over only to see a man's dozing face in front of her as well. She leapt up and made her way to the bathroom on instinct alone.

She washed her face, though she was already awake from the adrenaline. Kaori simply stood there for a while, staring at her reflection in the mirror, trying to calm herself down.

_Okay, that face was Leo's, and he was sleeping on my couch. Nothing happened, then, and the other person in my bed wa-_

The door creaked open and a short, orange-haired girl walked in. Kaori fell backwards, startled.

"My, Kaori, you sure are jumpy in the morning."

"Oh, sorry, did I wake you and Leo up?"

"No, I usually wake up really early, and... uh... Leo still seems to be asleep."

"Heavy sleeper, yeah?"

"Not a morning person, I guess..." After a bit of thought, Chiyo added, "Does morning really have a meaning here?"

"No, not really."

"I thought so."

Chiyo then leaned over and shut the door. A quiet click told Kaori that the shorter girl had locked the door.

"Kaorin, I have to tell you something very important." said Chiyo. "And you have to keep it a secret, alright?"

Kaori wasn't entirely sure how to react. She'd imagined something like this happening before, albeit with Sakaki instead of Chiyo. A short bout of reasoning lead her to the conclusion that she couldn't do that with Chiyo, mostly because she couldn't separate her from the mental image of Chiyo from high school. "Sorry Chiyo... we can't do this, you know? I... there's no feelings here, and I... still think of you as that little twelve year old girl, you know?"

"Kaorin, what are you talking about?"

_Shit! Shit shit shit shit! _thought Kaori. _Now she thinks... that I think... would she have put it together? Oh, screw it, just get her thinking about something else. _"What did you want to tell me, Chiyo?"

"I've been kidnapped. I didn't come to BAD willingly. They assaulted me and my friends in a bar, and then they took me. I don't know exactly what happened, but there was blood and a single gunshot."

"The Copacabana, perhaps?"

"I'm serious, Kaorin. Do you know of any way to actually leave this building? I've got to get out of here. I don't belong here."

"No, I'm sorry, I've never heard of anyone actually leaving the BAD. Well, there are the delegates, the ones who visit other countries and do diplomatic missions, but I'm not entirely sure as to how they do it. There's probably a shuttle or something located somewhere on this crazy rig, though."

"Thank you. Please, I know Leo and you are good friends and all, but don't tell him. I'm sure he's trustworthy, but the fewer people there are that know about a secret the better it can be kept, right?"

"Yeah, sure. I'll keep quiet about it, Chiyo." said Kaori, as she opened the door and left the bathroom.

"Keep about what quiet, Kaorin-kun?" asked Leo, glancing across the room at Kaori. "Oh. _Oh. Ohhhhhhh._" he added as Chiyo stepped out of the bathroom.

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"So we've got to figure out a way to rescue Chiyo, right?" asked Chihiro.

"Yep."

"Fine, fine." she said, and started poring through the files.

The room fell quiet, save for the rustling of papers as Chihiro read through the contents of her briefcase.

"Ahm. So, anyway, Sakaki, Kagura, Yomi, do you remember Chihiro from high school?" asked Osaka.

"Yeah, a little bit." said Sakaki.

"Erm... kind of. Only a few details, though." said Yomi.

"No, not.. not really, no." said Kagura. "Sorry about that, Chihiro."

The Wraith didn't answer her, but the Wildcat did. "Don't worry about that, Kagura! Chihiro's the kind of person who wouldn't really care if we talked about her in front of her face."

"I doubt your sincerity, Tomo. No slight against you, of course." said Sakaki.

"Yeah, well, it's true. Chihiro takes some pride in being utterly forgettable. It's amazing, but she seems to be able to simply walk through situations as though she wasn't there. She just... blends in with the scenery, you know? I mean, I'm sure it'd be a curse as far as the real world goes, but it's absolute gold if you're trying to be a stealthy secret agent type."

Sudden realization sparkled in Yomi's eyes. "That's true. None of us really noticed her when she walked in, did we? I don't think any of us really even saw her."

"Osaka did." pointed out Kagura.

"Osaka's different."

"Still," said Sakaki. "I find it somewhat weird that Chihiro and Tomo are both secret agents. I mean, I could see Tomo becoming one eventually, as she did really want to be one, but Chihiro... Ah, I don't really remember much about Chihiro."

Yomi pondered over this for a moment, and eventually caught a flicker of a memory. "She was in the drama department, wasn't she? Those guys who put on plays that we... er... didn't go to. Oh, and they made costumes too, like for the culture festivals. I think that's what she did, isn't it?"

"That doesn't explain why she became a secret agent, does it?"

"No, I guess not. Chihiro, why'd you be-"

"Classified information."

"Oh."

Silence lingered in the air for a while, but Osaka's voice broke it quickly. "Hey, if I'm Aladdin, and Chiyo's the Genie, who's the magic carpet?"

Chihiro stared at Osaka for a second, glanced down at her papers, then stood up suddenly. She walked to the cockpit without a word.

"The joke wasn't that bad, was it?" asked Osaka.

"He-hey! What are you doing?" shouted Wally, in a panicked voice.

The jet turned hard and stalled for a second, beginning to drop out of the sky. For a few panicked moments, it fell like a rock. The plane soon asserted itself against gravity and began flying again, albeit with some very frightened passengers.

"Hey, if you want to go somewhere else, just tell me! Don't wrench the controls away like that, Wraith! Where do you want to go, anyway?"

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"Kyrzygstan, eh?" asked the pilot. "I don't know about you, but do you think we really need it?"

"It's not really so much that Kyrzygystan is a big powerful nation so much as it is that Kyrzygstan is a nation period. They're fresh off of their victory over Darcia, which we helped them with, and they're jubilant. The "children of the sun" were crushed by the Kyrzygstanian legions not because of any military genius on the Kyrzygstanian's part, but because they had resources tried up trying to deal with our raids on their cities. So they're thankful, and we just need to show up and ask them to join the dominion with Zaire and Nepal and the like. No major nations are going to join us right now, of course,but the BAD will sound a lot more impressive when we say that the Dominion consists of, say, 18 nations all banded together."

"Yeah, I guess I see where you're coming from. We're coming in to land now, so be very friendly and diplomatic, okay Rémy?"

"I could vomit on them and they'd still want to join us. That's how happy they are. We'll be out of here in, say, an hour, tops." said the linguist, flashing him a wry grin.

His face then changed to a more serious, somewhat neutral expression as he exited the small helicopter and walked over to greet the president of Kyrzygystan.

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"Kyrzygstan, eh?" asked Tomo.

Chihiro looked at her blankly. "Yeah, Kyrzygstan. We're going to Kyrzygstan."

"I don't know 'Kyrzygstan.' As far as I'm concerned, it has too high a consonant:vowel ratio to be an actual country." pointed out Wally. "If you insist, though, we are heading north. Your coordinates better be right."

"Bishkek is there. Don't worry about it."

Osaka stared into the distance as the word Kyrzygstan ran through her mind for a while. The lessons from her cold war class started to creep back into her head, and she piped up. "So why, Chihiro, are we headed for a perfectly normal if not slightly awkwardly named former soviet state? Is the **Low Key** base in Kyrzygstan?"

"If the **Low Key **base was in Kyrzygystan," corrected Yomi, "then Wally and Tomo wouldn't be so damned surprised about suddenly going there. There can't be a **Low Key** base in Kyrzygstan."

Chihiro looked over the civilian passengers in the jet, and thought about telling them. She glanced over to Tomo and Wally as well.

_Oh, hell. I'm the only one here who even knows why we're going to Kyrzygstan, and I guess I might as well tell everyone. It can't hurt, really. They can't get information to anyone in BAD anyway._

"Do you all want to know why we're even going to Kyrzygstan?"

"Yes." everyone answered, in unison.

"Well, okay. You all heard on the news about the Kyrzygstan-Darcia war, right?" Chihiro glanced around at blank expressions. She sighed to herself, and decided to explain everything. "Well, you see, Darcia and Kyrzygstan were evenly matched, but eventually the Darcian front dissolved and Kyrzygstanian forces flooded in unopposed. Why? According to these documents, the result is the effect of BAD raids had on the Darcian forces, as the military had to pull units back from the front to help head off the floating pirate-building. A small imbalance tips the sensitive scales of war, and Darcia is no more."

"Nice little lesson on the war happening in the background," said Kagura, "but what does this have to do with us suddenly visiting the victors?"

"Well, the Zairois asked the BAD delegate in this transcript if Zaire would receive the same aid in the war that the Kyrzygstanians got. The delegate promised it, of course, but the Zairois pointed out that Kyrzygstan was not yet part of the dominion. The delegate said that this was simply because the BAD diplomat assigned to Kyrzygstan hadn't arrived yet. He's meeting with them today, scheduled to arrive around fifteen minutes ago."

Sakaki considered the idea. "A BAD delegate in Kyrzygstan, eh? What are you going to do with him? He won't have Chiyo, and he probably can't tell you where the Dominion is at the moment or how to get on. I don't think you'd really get that much useful information out of him."

Tomo grinned at Chihiro, having picked up her plan. "Sakaki, Sakaki, Sakaki! You're thinking too... good guy. They've got delegates, which they send out to other countries to convince them to do good things. BAD isn't exactly a high-population organization, right? They can't possibly be able to spare diplomats, so, of course, we're going to do the easy thing."

"The easy thing?" asked Yomi.

Tomo grinned at her. "We'll just kidnap the delegate and trade him for Chiyo."

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**Author's Notes:** Kyrzygstan is a nation that I fought once in Reign, which was a little internet game that I don't play anymore. If you did play, hey, this is Myanmar from like, rounds 2-6. Woo. If any of you are actually from Kyrzygstan, Nepal or Zaire and I've slighted you by implying that those nations are fairly small and not really considerably important, well, I apologize. I just started trying to remember nations that weren't exactly huge players on the world stage. I was trying to avoid a country like Germany, or the UK, or Russia, or... well, hell, even something like Afghanistan is something I didn't really want to mention.

Ah! For some reason, Kyrzygstan in my mind keeps corrupting itself into Kyrzygystan, so if I mistyped it like that somewhere back there and you actually noticed it, good job on you, that's egg on my face. Sorry about the last two chapters being really... talky. Action is on its way, I promise.

As always, reviews are appreciated. A lot.


	13. Deception

**Author's Note**: Sorry about the delay in updating, I got a bit distracted with writing the final chapter of Endeavors. Call it character favoritism, or simply me wanting to come up with a suitable ending for that story, but I had to spend a little bit more time than normal into Osaka's chapter. Anyway, that's not Wanderers, so let's just stop talking about it.

Here's the next chapter! I can't think of anything else to say, actually, so without further random blabber, here's the next chapter!

That didn't rhyme as well as I'd hoped it would.

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Rémy resisted the overwhelming urge to crack a wide, obnoxious grin while staring at the Kyrzygstanian president's slightly rotund face. While the man's face was somewhat comical, that was not the reason Rémy wanted to grin.

The real reason was that Lim had been absolutely correct. While Lim being correct would normally irritate Rémy, what Lim was correct about was more than enough to bring him elation. The Kyrzygstanians were absolutely head over heels for the BAD representatives.

_Apparently, their rivalry with Darcia ran much deeper than we originally anticipated. All the better for us, I suppose._

Rémy had been treated like a visiting lordling by he Kyrzygstanians, and while he was unused to this kind of treatment, he certainly didn't mind. They had not even bothered to screen him for weaponry, and as a matter of fact, Rémy still had the pistol and grenade which BAD assigned to its diplomats.

_Not that I really know how to use hem, but if I wanted to, I could probably assassinate the president._

As far as negotiations went, Rémy was surprised despite himself. The Kyrzygstanians were even more willing to join along than Lim had indicated.

_I could just stand here and smile politely at them and they'd draft up the forms in a few days. Of course, if I help them along it'll be done in an hour or so, but it's nice to have an easy assignment for a change._

_Then again, recruiting Mihama was supposed to be an easy assignment as well._

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"Right. So we're going to kidap this diplomant as soon as we land in Kyrzygstan."

Tomo glanced over to Chihiro. "So how exactly are we going to do this? I mean, it's fun to improvise and all, but having a plan before we go in would help."

"Well, we don't have much information, so a lot of this we're going to have to play by ear, but I found a few maps of Bishkek, so there's a start. Not lucky enough to find, say, blueprints for the capitol building or anything, but looking at it it's pretty easy to see where the helipad would be, and most of our problems would be solved by just goi-"

Tomo cut her off. "Hold it. Maps? Where did you get maps of Bishkek?"

"The internet is a wonderful tool, Takino."

"This plane's got an internet connection?"

"This plane's got a lot of stuff."

"I hate it. Too gimmicky."

"Hey!" shouted Wally. "That's my baby you're talking about!"

"It's a gimmicky baby!" Tomo shouted back. "So anyway, we've got maps, which means that the gimmick-mobile can find a place to land, right? Then you and I pop right off of the plane, do some fancy work, and we blast off, confusing the Kyrzygstanians and hopefully putting a thorn in BAD's side that results in us getting our genie back."

"Yeah, basically," responded Chihiro.

"Now wait a minute there, plucky," Kagura said, standing up. "Just you two?"

"Yep," responded the pair in unison.

"No. I'm going with you. I'm gonna help."

"We can't let her do that, can we?" asked Chihiro.

Tomo glanced between the two women, looking somewhat unsure. "Er… well…"

"You have to let me come along! When we were attacked in the bar, I could have done something! I should have done something, but instead I just… I just cowered! All I did there was curl into a ball and hope to not get noticed, and what happened? Tomo got shot! Chiyo got kidnapped!"

"I know you feel bad, Kagura, but you have to understand that Tomo and I are professionals, you know? I don't thi-"

"I'm not weak, you know? I can throw a decent punch or two, and I'm an athlete, right? I've got good hand-eye coordination and the ilk. I've even gone to the shooting range with one of my friends. I'm not inept, you know."

"Tomo…"

The Wildcat looked back and forth between her colleague and her old friend, and an unfamiliar feeling came over her. For the first time in a long while, she felt unsure and worried about something. "Erm… well… we don't exactly have rules, you know? Kagura does have a point with her athleticism and whatnot, and she'd be useful, you know. We're just two people here raiding a government complex, so any help we can get would be… er… helpful.'

"Tomo, you can't seriously mean that."

Chihiro looked at her partner. She looked over to Kagura as well, and then really _looked_ at Kagura. Suddenly, Chihiro found herself taken aback by the determination in the girl's tanned face.

"Oh, fine fine. I'll go tell Wally where to land. Tomo, take Kagura over to the armory."

"It has an armory?"

"Not an armory, per se, but that closet in the back has all sorts of interesting toys. Find something extra for yourself too. The electric rings aren't going to carry us very far. Maybe you should think of actually bringing an orthodox weapon for a change."

"No way. I'm not gonna let the gimmick-mobile change me that much, Wraith."

"It's not gimmicky! It's practical!" shouted Wally.

Ignoring him, Tomo turned to Kagura. "Well, Kags, to the gimmick-cave. Let's go get ourselves armed and slightly more dangerous."

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"Well, Chiyo, do you know anything about Chihiro? I kind of… well, lost contact with her after I went to college, you know… I don't suppose you know what she'd been up to."

"Nope, sorry, Kaorin. I didn't contact Chihiro. We were never really that close, unfortunately."

"Oh." Kaori responded, somewhat crestfallen.

Leo noted his friend's crestfallen mood and decided to try to break the mood. "Girls, ready and wake of soul are we! Meet intimate with people and get off we shall!"

Kaorin and Chiyo gaped at Leo.

"**My god,**" said Chiyo. "**That right there's really… really bad. Atrocious. Painfully so.**"

"**Was it really that bad?**"

"**It was really that bad. It's like you took a screwdriver and inserted it into my brain, and then wrenched out the portions of it that had to do with language…**"

"It was pretty bad, Leo," Kaori said.

"**Oh. Sorry about that.**"

"**I'm not done yet**," Chiyo grumbled. "**It's like you took the screwdriver, pried out the portions of my brain focused on language, and then you took the little mashed-up bits of my brain, and jammed them into my heart."**

"**I get the point, Chiyo.**"

"**I don't think you do. That sentence was like taking the screwdriver with little bits of my vital organs smeared across it, and then lighting it on fire and _raping me with it._ That is exactly how bad that sentence was.**"

"Kaorin-kun, never me Chiyo get anger future, kay?"

"**I might have understated it a bit.**"

"So anyway, Leo," started Kaorin. "Assuming I deciphered your atrocity of a sentence correctly, you're saying that we should go out and mingle a bit, yeah?"

"Hai!"

Kaorin gave Chiyo a nervous glance. Chiyo gave her the same look.

_I don't want to lie to Leo, but…_

Chiyo looked over at Kaori, frowning.

_What's she doing?  
_

Suddenly, the prodigy doubled over, grimacing. "Ooohg… ah…" she mumbled.

Kaori rushed over and knelt next to her friend. "Chiyo, Chiyo, what's wrong?"

Chiyo looked up to her friend, gasped suddenly, and blurted out some very quick and very slurred Japanese. "Kaori, pretend I'm ill, please. Just get Leo out of here, okay?"

Leo ran over. "**What'd she say? I didn't get any of that, sorry. My grasp of the language is… a bit faulty.**"

"**Sick! Stomach… sores! Without her, we go, mingle our alone, Chiyo wants!**"

"Sure you be, Chiyo-kun?"

"**Yes, Leo, I'm… I don't know. Just let me rest a little bit… okay?**"

"Insist if you. Kaori, go we go, yes."

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The three women stood at the doorway. "So, nobody's coming but Kagura, right?" asked Tomo.

"Don't encourage them." Chihiro muttered.

"Don't worry, Chihiro. I don't think either of us are really interested or… well, even half as capable." Yomi answered, trying to calm

"Well, Sakaki could be a backup medic or someth-"

"Don't encourage them." Chihiro said, somewhat more sharply than before. "Anyway, we've got to get a move on, so while Wally lands the gimmick mobile I want to kn-"

"It's not a gimmick-mobile!"

"While Wally lands the jet, I want to know what you two are packing. It's important that we know what we've got, alright? Kagura, you first."

"I got a pair of those electric ring things which you and Tomo seem to consider standard issue. I don't think I really need them, but it's probably good to knock people out with one punch instead of several. I'm also wearing some metal shin guards, and I've got a few of those flash grenade things."

"Close combat. Well, the guards will likely rely on their firearms, so that's not a bad plan at all. What about you, Tomo?"

"Lightning set."

"Oh. Well, that's not too bad. We're not going to be able to fight very well at range, but if we fight at range we're going to lose due to sheer volume of fire anyway. Let's go."

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Kyrzygstan, despite being a former member of the United Soviet Socialist Republic, had not seen much violence in recent times. Bishkek was still a fairly beautiful, peaceful city with large, open parks for the public to enjoy. The problem, of course, was that Kyrzygstan was far too cold at this time of year, and in fact at most times in the year, for anyone to actively enjoy. Still, it was a placid place.

Placid enough that the capitol building only had a few actively patrolling guards.

Few enough that they often patrolled alone.

Chihiro stood over one female guard, who up until recently had been in possession of her guard uniform. That role had been taken over by Chihiro. In exchange, the three women had given the girl Chihiro's perfectly average clothes. The woman was still tied up, but at least she wasn't naked.

"Hey, I think this thing doesn't look too bad on me, don't you think?"

"I don't believe it." Kagura muttered, somewhat irked. "You guys, you don't do anything standard, you know? I don't believe that your plan for infiltrating the capitol building is to dress up like guards and snea…"

Kagura's voice trailed off as she noticed what Chihiro was doing. The Wraith was busying herself with, well, herself. Chihiro had suddenly gripped her shirt just above her breasts and started to yank.

"Chihiro, you gettin' some crazy urges?" Tomo asked. "I mean, not to repress your sexuality or anything, but this isn't a dirty doujin, yeah?"

"Tomo, I'd berate you for your silly theory," said Kagura, watching Chihiro, "but I think it might actually hold some water," she added as Chihiro finished ripping the uniform to reveal a surprising amount of her cleavage.

Moving onto her thighs, Chihiro glanced up at them. "No, we're not doing things the ordinary way, Kagura, and we don't have time to steal 2 more uniforms. We're going in." With that, Chihiro walked away from other two, not towards a door, but simply towards a nondescript wall. "Are you coming or what?"

As the three women walked towards the building, Kagura began to ask more questions. "Why are we going here, exactly? The entrance is over there."

"The helipad is nearest to this wall."

"What, are we gonna climb the wall? I don't have much experience rock-climbing."

"No, no. There's a staircase there that I saw through the window about thirty feet over. It looks like it leads up to the helipad, so we'll just take that."

"Why are we going to this wall, then?"

"Because it's sneakier to do things this way."

"There is a wall in the way, you know."

"I brought a few toys myself, you know."

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The explosion was not exactly a major one. In fact, it was a fairly small explosion that destroyed a portion of a wall and did little collateral damage. Still, an explosion is an explosion, and it was enough to catch the attention of one of the nearby guards.

He ran over to the pile of debris and saw a woman lying sprawled amongst the debris. Her clothes had been torn in several places by the blast, nearly revealing certain parts of her anatomy. Despite himself, he stared for a few seconds.

She stirred slightly, and he jumped a bit more than slightly. "What happened? Are you okay?" he asked, trying not to stare.

"Nngh… Da…" she said, still seemingly disoriented from the explosion.

"What is it?"

"Darcian vigilantes! They've come to attack the president! Th… they demanded…"

"What did they demand?"

"They demanded to know where his offices were… I'm so sorry… I'm so sorry, I was so afraid… I told them where his office was… I thought I was going to die! I'm sorry! Where is the president? Please, please tell me he's not in his office! Where is he? I'm sorry! I'm… I'm sorry! I think they might…"

"What? They might what?"

She turned away from him, and he saw a tear fall from her cheek. She sobbed, and continued. "I think… I think they might be after the diplomat too! Darcia… Darcia's really sore about that whole deal with BAD… Where are they? Please, please tell me they're not in his office!

The guard's expression softened. "Don't worry, he's on the roof with the diplomat right now. He'll be fine."

"P…please stop them! Hurry!"

"I will, don't worry. I'll send someone back here to pick you up as well," he said, grinning. He ran down the hall to get backup and warn them of the incoming threat.

He glanced back over his shoulder one last time, smiling at his colleague. She smiled back and slowly pulled herself to her feet, watching him all the time.

_I don't even know her name… I'll just ask her after this entire ordeal is over._

He turned the corner, and as he did he saw the girl look outside the gaping hole in the wall.

_At least she survived._

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Chihiro stared at the gaping hole in the wall. That isn't entirely accurate. She stared through the gaping hole in the wall at her comrades, and grinned.

"Without a hitch. The diplomat's on the roof, the president's on the roof. We just go in and smash some face and snag him, okay?"

Kagura and Tomo entered through the hole in the wall, glancing around and making sure nobody saw them with Chihiro. Suddenly, a piercing sound rang through the building.

"Shit! They have an alarm!" exclaimed Kagura.

"Of course they've got an alarm." Tomo said, matter-of-factly.

Chihiro looked over at the other two women and grinned at them. "As a matter of fact, I'd been counting on that."

She ran towards the stairwell, and the other two followed close on her heels. Halfway up the stairwell, she stopped them.

"Okay, listen closely, because this has to be done in a very specific manner. Up there is the diplomat and an unknown number of guards, along with the president. We can't just go in gung ho, so this is what we're going to do…"

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**Author's Note**: Well, there's that chapter. We're swinging back into action now, so if the last few chapters have been kind of dull for you, well, consider the next chapter or two a bit of a reprieve from that. As always, reviews are very much appreciated. They're doubly important now, of course, that I only really have one story to work on, and thus one source of happiness-boosting reviews. I, being a writer powered by joy, require them! Feeed me reviews!

Okay, getting a little deranged now. Anyway, this also means that I only have to focus on Wanderers. Whether this means updates twice as often or me starting a new story, I don't know. Let's find out, yeah?


	14. Brilliance

**Author's Notes**: New chapter. I don't own Azumanga Daioh. Wally, Beaufort, BAD and Low-Key are my creations, though I don't really see the point in saying so. 'tis a new chapter, though. Enjoy. Read and write reviews, seriously. I like reading them, and (I hope) you like reading my work, so let's consider this a bit of a lopsided exchange, yeah?

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Rémy grinned at the Kyrzygstanian president. It was a simple, pleasant grin, the sort of grin that seeks to assure its target that the world was a generally nice, peaceful place, and that everything was going along just swimmingly.

The Kyrzygstanian president grinned at Rémy. It was roughly the same sort of grin. It was really quite a good grin for a politician to have.

The two men shook hands, enjoying the mutual benevolence of their shared expression, both men understanding that everything had gone according to plan. The only regret that either man had was that there wasn't a photographer to commemorate this occasion for future generations.

Like all good times, however, this one had to come to an end. The two men ended their handshake.

Then the alarm rang.

"What was that?" asked Rémy.

"That's… that's the alarm system!" answered the president.

"Sh… should we be worried?"

"It depends on what it's ringing for, of course."

"Well, do you have any idea as to what it cou-"

Rémy was cut off by the sound of a door being slammed open. He glanced over to the source of the sound, and saw that it was the accessway to the roof.

Well, Rémy didn't notice that. Instead, he noticed the person who came out of the stairwell. It was a female guard, her uniform having been torn in some very… interesting places. Despite himself, Rémy stared.

The woman ran up to Rémy and the president, obviously troubled and crying. The honor guard that had come to the rooftop to say goodbye to the BAD diplomat made no motion to stop her.

When she came close to the two men, the woman stumbled and fell to her knees. Rémy moved to help her, up, but she pushed his hand away and turned to the president.

"Mr. President! Mr. President, please, you've got to watch out!"

Rémy glanced around and noticed that the young woman had now become the center of attention for everyone in the room.

_Perhaps it's that entire damsel in distress thing. The boys want to help the pretty young girl here, because she seems to be so shaken. Come to think of it, she actually looks like she's been through an explosion._

"What is it?" asked the president.

"Th… th… it's… you're in danger! Be careful! They… they'll…th…" The woman looked at all the men, including the honor guardsmen now crowding around her, and broke down and started crying.

"Clear out, clear out," said the president. "Give her some room."

"Darcian renegades! T… there were so many of them! There must have been… nearly… nearly ten of them! They've broken into the complex, and they wanted you! I was caught in the explosion, and… and… they're after you!"

"Darcian renegades?" said the president, shocked.

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Tomo and Kagura waited in the stairwell, listening to the scene on the rooftop.

"She said ten, right?" Tomo asked.

"Yeah, ten."

"Okay then, when Chihiro slammed open the door, did you get a good look at the guards?"

"Not good enough to count them."

"No, I mean formation-wise. They're set up in an honor-guard setup, really. Lines of guards on each side, and they probably had the president and the diplomat walk down between them, to convey to the diplomat that they're disciplined and strong. That kind of thing."

"So?"

"So? So we know what to expect, kind of. There's probably two nearby the president. Chihiro can take the two closest to her. I'll take the four on the left, you take the four on the right. Got it?"

"Got it," replied Kagura, and threw her flash grenade out the stairwell.

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There was a sudden silence, broken by a clattering noise. All the people on the rooftop turned, reflexively, to see what the noise was.

A small orb bounced onto the roof, nearby the stairwell.

The men stared at it for a long moment.

The orb flashed, incredibly brilliant, a light that seemed to penetrate everything. In addition to the terrible, inescapable light, there was a terrific, inescapable sound. Rémy was absolutely bewildered by the sudden realization that sound and light could be so terribly jarring, and was terrified at the loss of his two major senses. The first sense to return was his hearing, but the first thing he heard was by no means comforting.

"HGRAAAAAARGH!"

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Osaka glanced around the jet's cabin several times, despite having seen the same things for the last few hours. Realizing that, the airy girl stood up.

"Osaka? What's up?" asked Yomi.

"Yomi… Yomi, I'm boooored."

"Well… it is a jet, just wait for Kagura, Tomo, and Chihiro to get back. Things will probably change after that, maybe we…can…" Yomi's voice trailed off as she realized that Osaka wasn't really listening to her, and had instead wandered off towards the cockpit.

"Wally… Wally, I'm booooored."

"Ah… well… there's really nothing that I can do about that, you know. This is a professional machine."

"So the gimmick-mobile doesn't have any toys?"

"It's not a gimmick mobile!" shouted Wally, but the effort was lost on Osaka, who'd wandered back to the main cabin.

"Sakaki… Sakaki, I'm boooooored."

The quiet girl glanced up at Osaka, contemplating the absentminded girl's statement. Sakaki thought for a short while about everything she knew about Osaka, and from that concluded that silence was the least dangerous response that she could muster at the moment.

Osaka stared at Sakaki for a good long moment.

Sakaki busied herself with the "Caduceus" medical kit that she'd used earlier to cure Tomo's bullet wound. She was fascinated by these tools, as they were truly beyond anything else she'd ever used, and she let that show as much as she possibly could.

"Oh, so you've found a gimmick to play with. Maybe I should go find a gimmick to play with too," said Osaka, wandering off.

"It's not a gimmick mobile!" Wally shouted, uselessly.

Had Sakaki not been so busy pretending to be extremely interested in the Caduceus first-aid kit, she would've noticed Osaka wandering into the armory that Tomo and Kagura had been in earlier.

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Chihiro looked at the president, blinking false tears away from her eyes. The president seemed completely and totally bewildered by the flash of the grenade and the terrific noise. Chihiro took this time to clamber over to the two guards closest to her, both also bewildered by the sudden light and noise. She quietly touched the ring on her left hand to the leg of the first man, dropping him to the ground. She repeated this process with the second guard, and then quietly grabbed his firearm.

She dropped the weapon at the feet of the president, and then started to call out, panicked. "What's going on? Help! Mr. President, are you okay?" After a while, she simply settled for curling into a fetal position atop her weapon and pretending to cry.

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Tomo rushed forward, a fraction of a second after the flash detonation. The guards on the left side were still largely blinded by the grenade, and Tomo used this distraction in order to quickly close the gap between her and her foes. She spared a glance to her right and noted that Kagura was doing the same.

_Well, they're very simple tactics. Still, effective._

She reached the first target and struck him in the face with a solid punch. Her ring triggered, shocking him and putting him down before he even knew that he was under attack. The ring, only good for one charge, left an indentation on the man's face.

Tomo's punch also jarred a set of disks loose from beneath her cloak, and she smiled slightly when she felt the familiar weight ease into her hands. She rushed to the next guardsman, striking him, but not knocking him out. As he stumbled after her, she struck the third opponent, once more failing to incapacitate him.

The final person in her group had shaken off the effects of the grenade, and pulled his pistol on her. "Halt!" shouted the man, his arms shaking

"You…. You dare to pull a firearm on me?" Tomo asked incredulously. "I am a child of the sun, you insolent Kyrzygstanian scum!" she shouted, and she dropped down and snapped out her leg, knocking the pistol out of the man's hands. Tomo stood up, and slapped the man.

In doing so, Tomo had planted a disk on his face. The man reached up instinctively, touching the area Tomo had slapped. As his hand touched the small white disk, he suddenly convulsed violently and dropped to the ground, still shaking somewhat but very obviously incapacitated.

Tomo turned to the other two men behind her and grinned. "Well boys, you'd best get those disks off of yourselves before something bad happens. You don't really deserve my sympathy, being Kyrzygstanian scum, but I suppose that I am a bit of a softie."

The two men looked at the places where Tomo had hit them earlier. Each man had a disk on his arm, sitting there innocently. Both men panicked and reached for the disk frantically, desperate to rip it off before it sent them into convulsions. In doing so, they completed the circuit between the positive side of the disk attached to their arms and the negative side of the disk that faced open air. The substantial charge stored in the disk broke free of its confines and danced through their bodies, taking them out of the fight.

"All war is deception," said the Wildcat, grinning placidly at the four paralyzed men.

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Kagura's method was significantly less elegant than Tomo's method, but by no means was it ineffectual. She dashed forward in the fading chaos from her grenade, enjoying a significant advantage over her foes. The athlete ran easily, her well trained muscles barely affected by the added weight of her metal shin-guards.

As she arrived at the first man, she glanced over to Tomo, who was still running to her group of opponents. Kagura couldn't help but grin.

_Beat you to them,_ she thought, _and now I'm going to beat you to beating them._

She struck the first opponent with a solid punch to the face, much like Tomo did. Unlike Tomo, however, it was likely that Kagura's punch did hold enough power to knock out the man, or at least daze and confuse him. Still, she appreciated the fact that the ring made it a guarantee.

She arrived at the second man and brought up her leg in a sweeping kick that caught him just below the shoulder. The kick was naturally a savage one, but the metal guards allowed the strike to land like a sledgehammer, and Kagura felt his ribs give way. He collapsed to the ground, sputtering.

She tumbled past the man, grabbing his pistol as she did. She exited the tumble by leaping towards the next man and landing another sledgehammer-like kick to his head. The man's gaze turned into a vacant stare, and he slowly crumbled to the ground.

Kagura landed from her leap and noticed that her final opponent was just beginning to shake off the haze of confusion from the grenade's tremendous assault of light and sound. Kagura snapped her arm forward, throwing the pistol right at his head. It collided noisily, and he dropped to his knees. Kagura dashed forward, taking advantage of the confusion, and struck him with her elbow. Despite it not being reinforced by metal, it was still quite a powerful blow, and the man dropped down.

Kagura turned back and looked at the men she'd just dispatched.

_What… what have I done?_

Disgusted with her work, Kagura turned away from them and noticed Chihiro balled up in front of who she assumed to be the Kyrzygstanian president. And behind the two, a short distance away, was Rémy Beaufort.

_------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------_

Wally sat in the cockpit, idly wondering how the Wraith and the Wildcat were doing. He never had the skills to be very good as an actual agent, but he was one of the best pilots that the organization had. Of course, this usually meant a lot of waiting around while the agents did their missions, but over time Wally had gotten used to the idle time.

"**Wally… Wally, I'm booooored."**

Osaka had obviously not. "Er… Miss Osaka… what do you want me to do about it?"

"**Entertain me, of course."**

_Saying it so frankly?_**"Wh... er… why don't you talk to your friends? Yomi and Sakaki probably can entertain you better than I can."**

"**No… Yomi and Sakaki couldn't entertain me. No slight against them, but they just can't do it."**

"**And why would I be able to?"**

"**You're a boy."**

_W…what? This can't be… can it? _**"Wh… what do you mean by that?"**

"**There's a few kinds of fun that you can only have 'tween a boy and a girl, y'know. And… and if you don't… I'd certainly be more than happy to teach you."  
**

_I can't do this… can I? I have to… I have to stop her somehow! _**"Miss Osaka… watch what you're saying! Miss Yomi and Miss Sakaki… they'll…"**

"**They've been living in Japan all this time, y'know. While they might've learned some English, I doubt that they'll be listening closely enough to understand us. Japanese people are mostly afraid of hearing English, you know."**

"**But… Osaka… th…"**

"**It can be our dirty little secret."**

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"HGRAAAAAARGH!" Kagura roared, indecipherably.

Tomo turned towards her friend, trying to see what had happened.

Kagura dashed towards the man, still screaming at the man. Despite her roars being untranslatable, they made one thing very clear. Kagura was angry.

Rémy looked at the tanned woman charging at him, screaming something identifiable as only pure rage, and froze. He willed himself to run. He commanded his body to try to do something, anything, in order to save itself.

He felt his hand reach into his pocket and pull out the grenade he'd been given by BAD. He pulled the pin, not thinking about what he was doing, only thinking about the entity of absolute fury charging directly at him.

After he pulled the pin, Rémy realized what he'd done. _I… what am I doing? I don't even know how to use the grenade! She's going to kill me, or we're both going to die, but… oh god, what have I done?_

Kagura arrived in front of the linguist, and stared at him, eyes burning with hatred. She brought up her leg for another sledgehammer strike, but she only hit air. Rémy was gone.

A familiar clattering noise drew Kagura's attention, and she saw the grenade hit the ground. Now it was her turn to freeze in fear. Kagura curled up defensively, covering her face with her arms, and closed her eyes, waiting for the detonation.

The first thing Kagura was aware of was a terrific force that struck her midsection, and she felt herself go a considerable distance. Afterwards, she felt the light burning past her closed eyelids, and then she felt the terrible warmth of the explosion.

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**Author's Notes**: Crap, bad things are happening again. Oh, by the by, all exchanges between Tomo, Chihiro, and the Kyrzygstanians are in English, but I didn't bold it because there was no real change between them, and it's silly to expect the Kyrzygstanians to speak Japanese. Angry about Osaka and Wally? Read the next chapter. At least do that, then decide if you don't like the story because of them. I've got something up my proverbial sleeve.

Oh, and sorry about the delay between this chapter and the last. My sister had her wisdom teeth removed, and I wound up playing nurse(and Civ:III) instead of...er... actually writing stuff. Bad Lire, bad.

Write more reviews. I challenge you guys to get at least one review in before I write the next chapter! Ha! Think of it this way, if you guys get a review in before I get a new chapter in, I'll decide that I'm going too slowly and try to get chapters up faster. If I beat you to putting up a new addition to the pile of writing attached to this story, I'll consider it a minor victory for me. Here's our scoreboard:

HaLire: 0 Reviewers: 0

I wonder who'll score more points by the end of this story? There is an end, mind you, it's not going to turn into some episodic story. I can't write that way, really.


	15. The Bulge

**Author's Notes: **Presenting a new addition to Wanderers... Character Bios! Well, not... really bios, more like little character blurbs. Bios would involve detail, and these are just really little things about the character. The kind of stuff about them that I've really thought up in my head to make them tick, but also the kind of stuff that I've never really found the place to put in the story without making it seem awkward, either because they're minor characters or because I don't have the talent. We'll start off with Wally!

Wally is a member of **Low-Key, **but he's a few years younger than Tomo and Chihiro. They seem to be his superiors as far as **Low-Key** is concerned. He's kind of got the attitude of a little boy, but most of all his problem is that he doesn't really have much confidence. This stems from his frailty, and this sort of thing has prevented him from actually becoming an agent for **Low-Key** like Tomo and Chihiro. He makes up for this by being a damned talented pilot, albeit a bit attached to his plane. Physically, Wally is kind of a weak guy, probably very sickly as a kid, although he was able to hold his own against Kagura for a short while. Other than that, there's nothing really standoutish about him, except for his green hair.

Note: Wally is not entirely original, and if you can figure out where I borrowed him from, go spoil yourself with something tasty, because you deserve it.

As for these little character blurbs, if you don't like them, say so. If you do like them, then, well, what character would you like to see next? Leo? Chihiro? One of the main girls, perhaps? Rémy?

Anyway, here's the acutal chapter. Enjoy.

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"**C'mon, Wally, you know you want to,**" Osaka purred, focusing a sultry look on the green-haired boy.

"**B… Osaka… Er… ah…" **Wally stuttered, having run out of things to stall Osaka with.

"**Oh, don't you think I'm pretty?**" Osaka asked, pouting and generally looking adorable.

_Yes. Damnit, yes, but that'll just encourage you! But… if I say no… you'll be mad at me and… what the hell am I supposed to do?_

Wally's silence did absolutely nothing to deter Osaka. "**Well? Don't you?**"

…_Shit. Oh, hell, honesty is the best policy. _"**Yes, Osaka, you're very beautiful."**

"**So then, if it's agreed that you like me an' that I like you, then chances are that neither of us will have any trouble with a bit of adult fun, yeah?**"

"**Hold on there, lady… This is all very sudden, don't you think? Why?**"

"**I've been livin' with Chiyo… er, the Genie, for something like five years now,**" Osaka started, standing up and closing the cockpit door as she talked. "**While she's certainly quite a gifted individual, it's kinda hard to shake the perception I've had of her for all these years, y'know? That she's still my 13-year old friend from high school, and that while she's ridiculously smart, she's still just a little kid. Perceptions just… don't die."**

"**And because of that…"**

"Because of that I always feel guilty whenever I bring a boy home, or somethin', kinda like I'm tainting her innocence by mere association, so I… never get any…"

_That's… certainly a blunt way of putting it. _"**So you're… basically… just horny."**

"**That's… certainly a blunt way of putting it."**

"**This will be totally meaningless, and no emotional strings are attached anywhere, correct?"**

"**I knew you were a smart boy, Wally."  
**

_She's pretty, and nobody will know unless she or I blabbers, so… Actually, this is more or less the perfect situation. _**"Sure, why not? What's the worst that could happen?**"

"**Let's… get it on."** Osaka said, smiling. She gripped her dress and started lifting it up.

Wally couldn't help but stare.

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Rémy stared at the leg arcing its way towards him in slow motion, and realized that the grenade he held in his hand would do absolutely nothing to save him at the moment. He dropped it more out of fear than out of any actual strategic thought, but his arms moved far too slowly to actually divert the force of the incoming blow.

Something yanked him backwards, right off of his feet, and Rémy's eyes followed the leg as it sliced through the section of air that his head had only recently been in. An impact with something quite soft and squishy jarred him back into the real world, and he was suddenly aware of a soft thrumming sound.

"All you diplomats are stupid, you know that?" said the pilot, looking over at him from the driver's seat of the small helicopter that had taken Rémy to Kyrzygstan.

"Wh…hnn?"

"Were you even watching that girl? She downed four armed guards with nothing more than her fists and legs, you know?"

"What?"

"I heard the first grenade go off, so I turned to figure out what was happening. Two guards fainted straight off, without anyone touching them, and then those two women entered. One of those women knocked one man out, and then slapped another. Three men were facing her, and they all collapsed without her touching them, except for her slapping the first. The other woman wasn't sly at all about taking down her set of guards, Mr. Beaufort. She simply walked through them, dropping them with savage punches and kicks. I think I might have heard her crunch a few bones from over here."

"Is… is that what happened?"

"Yeah, that woman struck like a sledgehammer. Then she looked over to you and roared like an angry god. What do you do? Do you turn tail and run? No, you pull out a _grenade_, you moron. She'd have dropped you before it was even detonating. Hell, you probably barely had time to pull the pin before she even got in there. Your head, man, your head would've probably been knocked clear off of your body if I didn't run out here and pull your shit out of the fight."

"Wh…what about the Kyrzygstanians? They… this will hamper relations..."

"We can't do anything about that right now. Those girls fight like demons. We're getting the hell out of here, Mr. Beaufort. The HQ is still nearby, in former Darcian airspace. We'll land there, you'll get in minor trouble, but at least you'll be alive."

"Y… yes, you're right," said Rémy, still shaken from the experience.

"Damn right I'm right. Man, a _grenade_. What were you thinking?"

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Tomo heard rather than saw the grenade fall. She'd been watching Kagura closely ever since she'd gone berserk, but the clattering sound of the small explosive drew her attention away from the athlete. Tomo stared at the grenade, and then glanced back to Kagura, who seemed to have frozen in fear at the sight of the weapon, simply covering her eyes and bracing for the explosion.

_Shit. She's kind of far, but I think I can make it if use the Touch…_

Tomo relaxed her body, not taking her eyes off of Kagura. Tomo stared at Kagura, and then stared _through_ Kagura. She took all of the irrationally exuberant energy that made her the delight and annoyance of many people, and focused. She closed her mind and stopped focusing on anything other than simply saving Kagura, and then she focused her mind more. The Wildcat's mind stopped its spastic activity and simply concentrated itself.

As Tomo did this, the world slowed down around her. She glanced over to the BAD diplomat who'd dropped the grenade, and noted his shock at being suddenly pulled backwards by someone who could only be the pilot of the helicopter. She looked back to Kagura, still frozen in her defensive posture, and she looked at the grenade, sitting quietly on the ground.

Tomo ran towards Kagura, moving as fast as she could, willing herself to move as far as she could while the Touch was in effect.

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Chihiro watched Kagura freeze as the grenade hit the ground, and watched Tomo initiate the Touch. She stared, powerless to intervene, as Tomo dashed across the rooftop impossibly fast in order to save her friend.

Chihiro saw Tomo dash over and shove the athlete away, but Tomo herself had only managed a scant few feet before she slowed down. Tomo, visibly exhausted, stopped running entirely. She turned towards the grenade and hunched towards the ground, weakly raising her arms to protect her face.

The grenade went off, its blast knocking Tomo onto her back. Chihiro looked at her for a second more, noting her injuries, and then leapt to her feet, grabbing the pistol beneath her as she did. She pointed the weapon at the sky and fired once.

Kagura was shocked out of her defensive posture by the noise, and she glanced around. Chihiro felt a pang of sympathy as she saw the look on Kagura's face when the athlete's eyes fell on Tomo.

_She knows what happened. Still, we've got to get out of here before the situation gets any worse I've got to take control right now.._

The Kyrzygstanian president, still standing next to Chihiro, was shocked by the noise and the general suddenness of the assault, and seemed entirely at a loss for both words and actions. Chihiro took advantage of this and grappled the man, pointing the pistol at his head.

"Cooperate with us, and this'll be much easier for you," she whispered to him. She shouted to Kagura over the sound of the helicopter rotors starting up. "Hey, muscles! Grab your friend over there and let's get out of here!" With that, Chihiro pulled the president roughly, and made her way down the stairwell, shouting various commands at people who weren't Kagura.

Kagura nodded numbly to her, and picked up Tomo, carefully hoisting the injured woman over her shoulders. Tomo was barely conscious and bleeding profusely, but she was definitely alive.

"H…hey," she muttered. "D…don't be so rough, yeah? I'm dyin' here, heh."

Kagura let the tears stream freely down her face as she followed Chihiro and the president.

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Yomi looked over to Sakaki and noticed that the taller girl was still busy with the medical kit that was on the jet. She sighed and looked over to the cockpit door. Osaka's image suddenly filled the doorway, and the girl smiled at her, somehow looking perfectly at home while wearing a sun-dress in what was very obviously a military jet. Osaka's enchanting smile vanished beneath the ceramic door as she shut it, but the grin still lingered in Yomi's mind.

_What is it about that grin? I've seen it somewhere before, I'm sure… Osaka smiles a lot… almost all the time… but something about that look was just… different. It's just like… erm… let's see… it reminds me of the way Tomo grins just before she…_

"AHHH!" someone screamed from inside the cockpit. "Waaaah!" The door slammed open, and Osaka was suddenly shoved through the doorway. She lost her balance, and fell to the ground. Wally's face, flushing a vivid red, appeared briefly in the doorway. "I'm sorry! Waaah!" he shouted, and then vanished back into the cockpit.

Yomi got up, ready to walk over to Osaka and ask her if she was alright, but she realized that Osaka was laughing. She sighed, and realized that if anyone needed to be comforted right now, it was probably Wally. She walked to the cockpit, carefully maneuvering around the giggling girl sprawled out on the ground, and went into the cockpit.

"Wally? What happened?"

"O…Osaka-kun… H… wah!"

Yomi thought to correct the mistake in honorifics, but decided that this was neither the time nor the place to be giving grammar lessons. _Besides,_ she thought,_ most English-speakers probably have some trouble with honorifics when learning. He'll get it eventually._ "Wh…what is it? What about Osaka?"

"You've been friends with Osaka-kun since high school, right? You should know, then!" he shouted, flustered.

"Know… what?"

"Ask Osaka-kun!"

Yomi sighed to herself, and left the cockpit. _I'll ask him some more about it after he calms down a bit. For now though… I'll ask Osaka._

"Hey, Osaka!" she shouted, kneeling down so as to be face to face with the giggling girl. "Stop that! What did you do to Wally?"

"Heh… hah… hmm? What?"

"You've probably scarred him mentally somehow! I want to know exactly what you did, so I can explain to Tomo and Chihiro about how you broke their chauffeur."

"Oh… that. Well, okay, I'll… heh… show you, but get Sakaki first!"

"What? Why?"

"She needs to see it, hah!"

"Sakaki! Stop playing with the medical supplies and come over here! Osaka broke Wally, and she won't tell me how unless she can tell you too."

The quiet woman neatly put away the medical supplies and, without a word, got up and went over to the two women on the floor in front of the cockpit doorway. "What is it?" she asked.

"Wh… haha… when you se… hah… When you guys see this, you'll shit bricks!"

Osaka, still laughing, reached down to her dress and started pulling it up.

Despite themselves, Yomi and Sakaki couldn't help but stare.

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Chihiro arrived at the entrance to the jet, meeting almost no resistance along the way. That which she did meet she easily dispatched by simply making it clear to them that she was holding their president hostage and that it'd be in their best interests to let her and Kagura go so long as their best interests involved keeping their president's head in one piece.

She pulled the door open, and, without looking, shouted at Wally. "Wally! Start the engines! We've got to get out of here fast!"

"Waaah!" answered Wally.

Chihiro, noting that that was not the usual sort of answer that Wally gave, turned and actually looked inside the jet, and noticed Sakaki and Yomi sitting on the ground, staring at Osaka's crotch. Chihiro looked closer to make sure that Osaka's panties were indeed on Osaka.

They were.

Chihiro looked at Yomi and Sakaki, double-checking with them to see what they were staring at. She followed their eyes, and she saw that they were most definitely staring at the impressive bulge in Osaka's panties.

_The bulge in Osaka's panties._

Chihiro dropped her jaw and the president, and stared at the bulge. "S… since when has Osaka been a boy?" she asked, as the President ran away in as dignified a manner as he could manage.

"'bout five minutes ago, dear," answered Osaka, still laughing.

"You know what? Nevermind." Chihiro made her way around the three girls on the floor and went into the cockpit to find out what was wrong with Wally.

Kagura entered the plane, tears drying on her face, and placed Tomo gingerly on the ground.

Tomo smiled weakly, and sat up. "So, Osaka, you're a boy now?" she asked, staring at the bulge.

"Seems so," she answered, still laughing.

Tomo sighed and reached into Osaka's panties, prompting a yelp from the supposed transgender individual. Her hand emerged a split second later, holding a small tube filled with the discs she'd used in the fight earlier.

"Oh, good, you left the wrapping on. I was afraid you'd ruin them." With that said, Tomo flopped back on the ground. "Hoy, Chihiro!" she shouted into the cockpit.

Chihiro's head peeked out, smiling as the jet's engines thrummed to life. "Yes?"

"Call Derek… tell him I've been injured… I want to see him as soon as we get off of this plane, alright?"

"Injured?" shouted the three girls on the ground, having finally been freed of the hypnotic powers of Osaka's bulge.

Tomo noticed the attention she'd drawn, and grinned at her friends. "I've been exploded! Ask Chihiro for the story… I'm gonna go pass out now, okay?" With that, Tomo sighed and closed her eyes.

It wasn't clear as to whether or not she was faking it.

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**Author's Note**: Hey, chapter's done... but what's the score?

Reviewers: 1 HaLire: 0

Oh, cool. Read and score points, guys. Go for it. Who knows? Maybe I won't manage to score a single point before Wanderers is over.

Now to go deal with some of those random ideas that keep thwacking me in the head.


	16. Invincible

**Author's Note**: Whee, it's a new Wanderers chapter. The girls(and Wally) are on their way back to **Low-Key** headquarters, Beaufort's on his way back to BAD HQ, and... er... oh, it's just a travelling chapter. Conversations abound... er... let's see... am I forgetting anything? Oh right! The little character blurb!

Chihiro's the subject today. When I first started the story, I wasn't even thinking of Chihiro. To be fair, nobody really does. I'd intended Tomo to work as a solo agent, but then I realized that certain events in the story(such as all those times when Tomo gets injured) needed her to have supporting characters, and furthermore that it would be bad for the story if Tomo came off as a super-agent who could do almost anything on her own. As a result, Wally and Chihiro came into the story. Chihiro is kind of a foil for Tomo, as she does her work for **Low-Key** in a professional manner. Between the two, Chihiro is more likely to plan out her actions beforehand, while Tomo is more likely to wing it. Chihiro is an agent just like Tomo, but she works differently than Tomo does, accomplishing her goals by deception created on her own instead of relying on hidden strengths, like Tomo's Touch. Chihiro is, as a matter of fact, entirely normal in the story, and her only notable ability is her ability to blend neatly into situations, which serves her well as a **Low-Key** agent. Mediocrity is a powerful thing, I guess, although you won't find her kicking copious amounts of ass like Tomo and Kagura do on occassion.

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The jet coursed along the rolling tundra of the former Soviet Union, turning south in order to avoid the aging yet still formidable former Soviet air defense forces. It turned east abruptly upon reaching the black sea and flew low over the steppes of central Asia, quickly accelerating to maximum speed, which was a healthy multiple of the speed of sound.

The sonic boom shocked many people living in the lowlands, but by the time any of them managed to look upwards to find out what had happened, the source was long gone.

They probably wouldn't have noticed it either way, what with the camouflage and all.

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"I've been exploded! Ask Chihiro for the story… I'm gonna go pass out now, okay?"

Yomi clamped her eyes shut, fighting against the instinct to turn and look at Tomo, to see exactly what was wrong with her. She resisted, not sure if her heart could handle the sight of her friend injured yet again, and perhaps more grievously than before. She quickly realized that her heart could not bear not knowing and reluctantly opened her eyes and turned towards Tomo.

Tomo's face was, for the most part, relatively unscathed. Unfortunately, that was the only part of the wildcat that was as such. Her arms and legs had suffered the most visible damage, with shrapnel from the grenade embedded deeply along each limb. Her torso had escaped major damage, but some shrapnel had still managed to get past her arms and legs and caused damage as well. The girl's body was almost covered in blood, but her face remained unmarred, almost immaculate.

Yomi instantly regretted looking at her injured friend and started to break down, sobbing and choking back tears.

Tomo looked up at her best friend and frowned. "Hey, don't do that, you jerk. I'm sitti… erm… lying here, all exploded, trying to get to sleep, and what do you do? You go and interrupt me with your… whatever it is you're doing. You're always so insensitive, buddy. You've been so ever since we were little kids."

Yomi simply looked down at her friend and let the tears flow freely.

"Hey, you know, this is the part where you get angry and forget completely about all of that business with being sad and all, yeah? That crying thing, it's not as funny when it's not my fault."

"Tomo… how can you…"

The wildcat looked up at Yomi and smiled reassuringly. "Yomi, Yomi, you should know, shouldn't you?" She held up her hand, palm facing towards the sobbing woman. "Check it out."

Yomi stared at the girl's palm, not entirely sure what she was looking for. No shrapnel had hit there, but blood still stained it, flowing from wounds in the rest of Tomo's arm.

"Oh. Ooooooh. I gotcha." Osaka said knowingly.

Osaka saying anything knowingly was somewhat of a foreign experience for Yomi, and given the circumstances, it was no surprise that she was shocked. "What… what is it, Osaka?"

"Tomo's invincible, you see?" answered Osaka, still using the same tone of voice.

"Invincible?"

"Look there, on her palm. The lifeline's intact the entire way through, and it even extends past her palm, so the obvious conclusion is that she's going to outlive us all. Well, there're a few lil' discrepancies along the line an' all, but they probably just represent a bit of trauma."

"Yeah, see? I'll be fine." Tomo said.

Despite Tomo and Osaka's best efforts, the sound of sobbing still filled the plane. "Hey, damnit Yomi," cried the wildcat irritatedly, "I said stop that!"

"Tomo… that's not me."

Kagura sat next to Tomo, sobbing as well. "I'm sorry Tomo… this is all my fault… I'm sorry Yomi, I'm sorry Tomo… if…"

"Oh, for fuck's sake," muttered Tomo. "Wally, when did we swich to the waaaahmbulance? Or is it just anoth- AUGH!" shouted Tomo as the jet suddenly accelerated.

Chihiro walked back into the main cabin, leaving Wally to pilot in peace. "So, how are things back here?"

"Ah! Hello Chihiro, welcome back. Everyone's okay, except for Kagura, who's on a guilt trip, and Yomi, who's being silly again. Did you contact Derek?"

"Yeah, I called him. He's on his way to the **Low-Key** headquarters right now, but with the way Wally's flying, chances are that we'll beat him there, especially because he started muttering something at me about no-fly zones and where people could stuff them."

"So we're just going for a straight shot through? Oh well, it's not like anything they've got will catch up to this jet. Still, that's not really like him."

"Yeah, he seems rather shell-shocked right now. What'd you guys do to him?"

"Wha? Why would we do anything to him?" asked Osaka, innocently.

"Nothing good is going to come from this thread of conversation," muttered Tomo. "Kagura, why are you crying, exactly?"

The athlete looked down on Tomo with tear-stained eyes, and sobbed out her answer. "Why do you think? It's b… because this whole situation is my fault!"

"Is that it?"

Kagura stared down at Tomo, shocked. "Yes."

"Chihiro, solve this problem for me. Use your magical witchcraft and make it all go away, please."

"Tomo, if anyone here has a claim to witchcraft, it's you. Solve your own problem."

"Oh, fine. Kagura, come closer, I need to tell you something."

The athlete leaned in, close to Tomo's uninjured face. It filled Kagura's vision, and she almost let herself forget the situation at hand, forget that Tomo was ever injured.

Then Tomo slapped her, albeit weakly. "Stop. That."

"I'm… sorry. I shouldn't have insisted on coming along with you and Chihiro."

Tomo slapped her again. "Okay, I know you're an athlete and all, and thinking isn't really your strong suit, but I'm going to ask you again to stop doing this and start thinking. What would have happened if you didn't come along on that little adventure with me and Chihiro?"

"You wouldn't have had to push me out of the way of that grenade, and you wouldn't have been injured."

"Osaka, slap her for me, my arm's tired."

Osaka did. Tomo stared at her, shocked.

"I… I was mostly joking there, Osaka, but thanks anyway. Kagura, ignore the bit before the grenade. What happened there?"

"Chihiro snuck in, and provided a distraction, and then we had to disable those guards, and…"

"Yeah. How many guards?"

"Eight."

"No, ten." Chihiro corrected. "Oh, well, I guess you guys had to take eight, but there were ten in total."

Tomo cleared her throat. "The point I was trying to make was that there were a lot of guards. I don't know if you noticed this, but around the time when I got to my fourth opponent, the confusion from the flash bombs had already been shaken off. Four. Chihiro took down her two as well, and probably could have taken on more, but then people would have been alerted to her ruse, and the president could have gotten away. The operation wouldn't have gone nearly as well without your help, so don't go acting like you ruined things, 'cause you didn't."

Kagura didn't answer, and merely sobbed.

"Osaka?"

"No, no, it's alright!" said the athlete hurriedly. "I get it, I get it, you don't have to slap me again."

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Wally glanced around the cockpit, focusing on the various instruments and all the little bits of information that they fed to him.

_Bah, so much to worry about. The Wildcat's injured, and you here keep bleeping at me about no-fly zones and expect me to bother with that? It's not like any of the planes owned by these minor countries can really catch this jet, so why even worry about things like that, or cruising altitude even? This way's faster, so stop bleeping at me, you damn gimmicks!_

…

_Oh well, at least it's something to think about that's not Osaka's… _

…

_Damnit, Wally, focus on something else! Anything, anything else, just don't think about that girl's…_

…

_Did we just fly past a hotel? I'm not that low, am I?_

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Sakaki sat quietly, watching the events in the jet unfold, and letting her friends be themselves. She peered closely at Tomo, trying to assess her injuries.

_It's amazing. She's got shrapnel wounds everywhere, and yet she's still conscious and joking with everyone. No injuries to anywhere critical, which is lucky, and while she's lost a considerable amount of blood, she's not in any immediate danger._

She thought about getting up and trying to treat some of the injuries with the Caduceus medical tools, but decided that at the time it was best for Tomo to simply be Tomo and reassure everyone that everything was alright. This decision being made, Sakaki simply sat back and enjoyed the strange pleasantness that seemed to permeate situations with her friends even in a time of apparent crisis.

Sakaki was suddenly overcome with the feeling of being watched, and felt somewhat guilty at the realization.

"What'cha lookin' at, Sakaki?" asked Oska, staring at Sakaki with astounding intensity.

"Y… I… ah…"

"Oh, you're lookin' at Tomo. Why?"

"Isn't it obvious?" asked Yomi.

"Yeah, she can't help but ogle my amazin' bod." Tomo added.

Chihiro looked at her partner and sighed. "Right. Anyway, Kags, now that you're all done feeling bad about yourself, care to come up to the cockpit and keep Wally company? I can hear him muttering to himself, and I'm just a bit worried about him cracking up on the way back to headquarters and crashing our plane into a building or something."

"Yeah, sure, why not," replied the athlete.

"Oh! Lemme come too!" said Osaka excitedly.

"Well, if you feel that strongly about it, then come on up."

The three women exited the main cabin, leaving only Sakaki, Yomi, and Tomo.

"Still staring at me, are you, Sakaki? Kaorin would be so jealous! Then again, she'd probably understand. After all, everybody's lesbian for Tomo."

'You know," started Yomi, "you can pipe up and say something sometime soon. It's a rather easy fix to the problem of Tomo heckling you. What were you staring at, then?"

"Tomo."

"Told you. Everyone's a lesbian when it comes to me… er… or whatever the appropriate sexuality is."

"That joke fell apart pretty quickly." Yomi muttered. "Anyway, sure you were looking at her, Sakaki, but why?"

"She's amazing."

Tomo giggled nervously. "Okay, now you're starting to creep me out," she said.

"No, I mean that it's amazing that you were able to take a grenade hit like that. There's considerable shrapnel damage all around, and you're bleeding a lot. By all means, you should be worried and probably unconscious, but you're not. It's amazing."

"Oh, that. I'm invincible," said Tomo, holding up her palm.

"Tomo… that's not an explanation."

"Well, I've been doing this job for so many years now, yeah? I've built up a resistance to grenades, or something. Soon, scientists will investigate me, take blood samples, and isolate the antibodies to create a grenade vaccine, and I'll win the Nobel peace prize for it. People will love me, and there'll be parades held in every country thanking me for getting blown up so damned often. I'll be invited to president's houses and the like, and they'll all be absolutely floored by my dedication to my work. I'll live the easy life as a result of being blown up."

Yomi sighed. "Joke. Too far. Stop it earlier."

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Kaori and Chiyo sat together in the hotel room, watching a movie rented from the hotel. The two simply relaxed, quietly ignoring the fact that Chiyo was a prisoner and trying to make the best of things.

"So, Chiyo, you've been living with Osaka, right?"

"Yeah, I have."

"That must have been nice."

"Yeah, it was. She just provides such a radically different outlook on the world that… I don't know, I just find it incredibly stimulating. That girl, she was a real dreamer, a real unique person, something that you couldn't teach or learn. Working with her meant that I was struck with brand inspiration for all sorts of things. I guess… you could say that she was my muse."

Kaori giggled.

"What?"

"Are you sure that you two aren't lesbian lovers? It kind of sounds like it, you know?"

"I think you were just reading too much into it. As long as we're talking about that subject, that was actually pretty weird, to watch her love life. Osaka had no trouble at all attracting boys, which I always found a little irksome, probably because most of them look at me and think I'm underage still."

"You know, that's not really their fault."

"Yeah, I know. Anyway, she seemed to have a lot of budding relationships, but they never really went anywhere. I'm not sure why, but she always seemed to break it off with them a short while after bringing them home, and as far as I know nothing ever really happened between her and boys."

"Hmm. I wonder if that caused her any sexual frustration."

"If it did, that'd be legendary right there. No outlet for it, so she's probably got a few really weird thoughts concerning that matter." Chiyo paused for a second. "Now that I think about it, she has a surprisingly large amount of hentai doujins in her room, although she always claimed that she read them for the engaging storylines."

"**Those things have storylines now?**" asked Leo, entering in the main doorway. "**You guys should've been out there, that was pretty bizarre. I think a jet flew right by the BAD HQ, although it went by really quickly and blended in rather well with the sky.**"

"**Plane? Building down flying, does it not? Abnormal plane flies that low.**"

"Weird plane yes, Kaorin-kun."

Chiyo sighed. "**Leo, -kun is a masculine suffix. It'd be like me calling you Ms. Leo. Stop it.**"

"Kaorin! This kept from me? Why?"

"**Thought cute.**"

"Aha! I cute!"

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**Author's Note**: Whee, it was an interesting chapter to write. This marks the start of a relaxed portion of the story, in which things will happen, but not happen, you know? I'm afraid that out of necessity, the next few chapters are probably not going to have very much action, at least not until a plan comes together and **Low-Key** makes its move to take on the BAD and rescue Chiyo. There's not much else to say, aside from... er... I'm starting college in around two weeks, so let's hope that I still have time to update, yeah? Furthermore, let's hope I don't completely forget what little storyline I've planned out, ja?

Er... let's see... what else... Oh, nothing much. Read and review, because u herd i liek review.


	17. Healing Touch

**Author's Notes**: Yaha! It's a new wanderers chapter! What's that mean? A new character blurb, of course! Who are we going for today? Well, with Wally and Chihiro done, and no reviewer suggestions either way, I've decided that I'm going to write a blurb on my personal favorite character, Osaka.

Osaka is my favorite character (Whee, repeating myself.) and is simultaneously my favorite and my least favorite character to write about. Why? Well, I've always really liked Osaka, and as a result I wanted to get her just right. I see Osaka as the character who's got her own unique way of thinking, whose universe is simply skewed a few degrees over from the norm. She's the foil to Chiyo(the dreamer and the realist) and so she always has to say something that really is somewhat out there. I did not want to portray her as stupid, but simply as different, so I wound up deciding that her favorite gimmick would be language jokes and weird stories/ideas in general. That's why she went to college to study mythology and all that jazz, and why her humour in my stories has to be somewhat out there. I think that with her, part of the joke is that Osaka even thinks that there is a joke (as in the sushi roll- lorr- lore- fish lore- fish tale joke) and I usually find myself drawing from a weird story that I've read before in order to write her jokes(well, not the sushi one. That's 100 lire) because that always seems like the best sorce material for it.

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"Breaking news! Kyrzygstan, fresh off of their victory over the former nation of Darcia, is not yet entirely able to enjoy the spoils of victory! Just minutes ago, the Kyrzygstanian capitol building came under attack from people who have only been identified as Darcian renegades. These terrorists infiltrated the building and assaulted the president on his rooftop as he was seeing off a foreign diplomat. Several guards have been injured, but as of now no deaths have been reported. The president was kidnapped, but appears to have been released without coming to harm. Det- KCHHT!"

"Hmm? What'd you turn it off for? I thought that you liked stories about death and violence and all that stuff."

"Yeah, but there was none of that there, didn't you hear? Injuries, but everyone came out alright in the end."

"Still, it's a terror action, Yukari. Eventually, it might concern us, so I don't know why you'd just flip it off."

"Wha? It's Kyrzygystan and Darcia, that doesn't concern us at all. Just relax, Nyamo, and don't pretend like we're more important than we actually are. Six, seven billion people in the world, right? What's the use in worrying about ten or twenty that are almost on the other side of the world from Japan?"

"Somehow, I think that line of thinking is ill-suited for our job."

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Derek sighed and checked his watch. Chihiro had called him roughly twenty minutes ago, but the traffic in Tokyo's downtown during the afternoon was fairly close to horrendous. He sighed, and looked up to the skies.

_I wonder how Tomo, of all people, managed to get injured… With the Touch, she's usually able to avoid the worst of things. She probably doesn't even have a resistance to pain like most of the people in her line of work do, because she wouldn't need one._

_With the Touch, how badly could she have been injured?_

_Well… Chihiro didn't sound terribly panicked about it, although Chihiro would be one to understate that sort of thing…_

_She's probably not th…_

Derek's thoughts trailed off as he saw a small patch of sky flicker, as though it didn't quite fit in with the rest of it.

_The jet!_

"Hey! You, driver! We've got to get through this thing in a hurry, man! To **Low-Key**, as fast as possible, please!"

"What?Geeze, Doctor Stiles, I've been your driver for how long now, and you're still so rude to me! I'm hurt, buddy."

"I'm sorry, really, but we need to get there quickly."

"Is it against your Hippocratic oath to use this little ambulance alarm to clear the roads for us?"

"You know, if it is, I've conveniently forgotten that bit. It may, after all, actually be fairly important that we get there as fast as possible."

"What, did you piss Angie off?"

"No, it's not that bad yet."

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Rémy sighed as he arrived at BAD headquarters.

"Oh, it's that sigh again, eh? So, Rémy, what'cha wanna bitch about this time?"

"Lim, if we could actually receive news channels all the way up here, but lemme just tell you that I can probably outdo any of your stories now."

"What? From Kyrzygstan? Pfft."

"I'm not joking."

"Oh, forgive me for underestimating the mighty nation of Kyrzygstan, which already loves us anyway. Unlike you, I got this cushy ass job where I had to go to China and convince them that despite them being nearly a superpower, they should at the very least be very nice to BAD."

"So did they laugh you off, or what?"

"You know, I think Chinese people use echolocation."

"Wha?"

"Oh yeah. I always heard that China in general and Beijing specifically was really crowded, but man, you don't really know what _crowded_ means until you've been there. Everyone's on a bicycle, yeah, and everyone keeps ringing their little bell. Ringringringring. For a while, I thought that they were just outright afraid of crashing into someone all the time, because they NEVER STOPPED DINGING THEIR BELLS. I swear, it was like they were all little children who discovered that they could make a swell and quite annoying noise."

"What's this have to do with echolocation?"

"Oh, I saw a Chinese person having sex with a dolphin, and nobody seemed to have cared, so I figure that that's pretty normal for them, and that maybe they've all naturally got the ability to use echolocation by some bizarre result."

"You're joking, right?"

"Yeah, I'm joking. I think that the ringing is just kind of a constant "Hey, I'm here!" instead of a "Hey, I'm here, jackass!" that the horn is for western civilizations. I figure that with enough experience, you can translate the bell's cacophony into like, an aural map of everyone around you, or something."

"Hmm?"

"I swear, I saw this one guy come like, three inches within being taken out by a truck, and you know what? He didn't care at all. Didn't flinch."

"… I see. So, how'd the diplomacy part go? You know, the part that doesn't involve you wandering the streets like a lost little child."

"About that. I think they knew that I wasn't Chinese. And… they were totally shameless about it. It was like I was on TV or something… There were people just following me around, watching me. Creepy, man. I don't know, it was just very… er… different from what I'm used to."

"So, about the diplomacy."

"Oh, they laughed me off. The gist of it was 'ahaha, well, we won't shoot any missiles at you if you don't bother the Chinese people,' which, in retrospect, is probably as good as we could have hoped for from a superpower. How'd your mission go?"

"I had to use my grenade."

"What? You actually had… Do you even know how to use that thing?"

"Pull pin, drop grenade, get out of there. I did all of those except for the last step, but my pilot is literally a life-saver."

"So why'd you have to blow something up?"

"Kyrzygstan's president was attacked by angry Darcian rebels. They kept shouting something about the freedom or the blessing of the sun."

"You… were attacked… by terrorists?"

"They were more like commandoes than terrorists. Loud, bright grenades to confuse everyone, and they dropped something like fifteen guards in the blink of an eye. I don't know what happened, but my pilot pulled me out of there before I got in any shit."

"Wow. That's rough. Too bad you don't know how the Kyrzygstanians will respond."

"Oh, they're reasonable people, I don't think they'll hold it against us."

"Really?"

"They also don't have anything that can shoot us down, so why worry about them?"

"Got a point there."

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The jet coasted down onto a runway that, for the most part, seemed fairly normal. It rolled along the asphalt path and coasted towards a nearby hill.

Several years ago, an American had visited Tokyo with a mission. He'd been from North Carolina, and was here on business. He contacted a few people, and began the ambitious **Low-Key** project. One of the things he'd brought with him from America was the idea of hiding something big in a hill, something like Cheyenne Mountain except on a much smaller scale.

Granted, the **Low-Key** headquarters weren't nearly as durable as NORAD's headquarters, but few people even knew about **Low-Key** anyway, so all that had to be done was to conceal the base, not protect it from a nuclear assault.

For that purpose, the small hills around Tokyo served nicely.

The hill slid back, the jet slid in, and the hill closed up. Because the jet launched from an entirely different area, only landed here rarely, and was a fleet of one, very few people ever saw it. Those that did were quickly ridiculed for being ridiculous conspiracy theorists.

The door on the side of the jet popped open, and a green-haired figured descended quickly. It glanced around the garage, making sure that there was no ambulance there, and proceeded to do what could only be interpreted as a victory dance.

The ambulance roared into the garage seconds later, siren blaring for no reason other than possibly the driver's irritation with Wally's preening. Eventually, the blaring siren calmed down and the women exited from the plane.

Derek sighed and stepped out of the ambulance, walking over to the growing crowd of people at the jet's exit. Chihiro was waiting for him. She smiled at him, but Wally got the first word in.

"Beatcha, Derek! And we had to come from the other side of the world! You were in the city, man!"

"You fly, we have to deal with traffic."

"We have to deal with no-fly zones."

"Or not deal with them, as it were," muttered Chihiro.

"Right. Anyway, Chihiro," Derek said, turning away from Wally. "How is Tomo? Where is Tomo, for that matter?"

"Ah, right. Kagura, Doctor Stiles is here, bring Tomo over."

Derek turned in the direction Chihiro was addressing, and in that direction saw a girl who was obviously a very strong, healthy, athlete. The only thing that didn't seem to fit in with the strength was her sad face and the eyes brimming with her tears. In her arms, she cradled Tomo carefully.

Derek glanced down at Tomo, and then smiled wanly at the girl carrying her.

"Tomo, that you? So, you got injured, eh? What happened?"

"I jumped in front of a grenade."

"What? Is that it?"

"Grenades go boom, Derek."

"Please, a mere frag grenade is not a grievous enough injury to warrant the attention of a doctor of my caliber! Go jump on another one."

"Osaka."

Derek stared at Tomo, puzzled. He decided to ask her, "Huh? What does San Francisco's sister city have to do with th-" but was cut off when Osaka slapped him.

"Owh. Hey lady, what was that for?"

"Hi, I'm Osaka," said the girl who'd just slapped him, smiling at him as though nothing notable had happened.

"…oh. Are Taipei, Manila, and Shanghai going to slap me too?"

"Wha?"

"Nevermind. So anyway, Tomo's hurt, is she? Well… hmm… it's not that bad, but we should really just remove all the grenade bits and sew her up as soon as possi…" Derek's voice trailed off as he continued to look around. "Hey, Chihiro, this is a lot of girls, you know?"

"Yeah, it is. Kind of a high school reunion, actually."

"What? Why didn't I go to that high school?"

"Job. Focus on it."

"Right, right. Wally! Go fetch me my supplies from the ambulance!"

Wally turned to Derek, staring daggers. "Why do I have to do it?"

"'cause they're all ladies, and I'm the handsome, desirable doctor, and you're a chauffeur. Also, you got to spend the entire plane ride with them, and I'm just getting acquainted."

Wally frowned at Derek.

"Oh, fine, fine. Er, Kagura, was it? Could you do me a favor and bring my patient over to the ambulance over there? We'll roll out a stretcher and check Tomo's dirty bits out, and then we'll go fix her up."

"Osaka."

Slap.

"Ow. Well, it doesn't really hurt, but ow, my pride."

"No peeking."

Derek sighed, and without saying anything else, led the girls to the ambulance. They placed Tomo on the stretcher, and Derek pulled out his bag of tools, which looked rather a lot like a more well-stocked version of the Caduceus bag that Sakaki had grown so fond off in the **Low-Key **jet.

Kagura watched intently, hoping that Derek could somehow reverse the pain that she'd caused Tomo.

Sakaki watched intently, hoping that she could learn something about medicine from Derek.

Osaka watched intently, although with her it was hard to tell if she watched anything more intently than she watched anything else.

Tomo watched intently, making sure that Derek didn't try anything.

Chihiro and Wally stood off to the side, watching idly.

Derek looked at Tomo, making careful note of where each injury was. He closed his eyes for a second, blocking out everything in his mind's eye but Tomo. Soon, he blocked out even Tomo, and all he could see were her injuries. He saw a cut here, an abrasion there, shrapnel in this area, bleeding in that, and above all, a vivid, perfect yellow star. Derek focused on the star, putting his entire being into the thought of this one simple geometric shape and all of the order that it represented, and opened his eyes.

Calmly, he began to restore order to the injured body before him. He moved at a normal pace.

"He's trying to impress the girls, isn't he?" asked Wally.

"Yeah," replied Chihiro, "but what can we say? At least it's effective."

Sakaki and Kagura were shocked. Derek's hands were a blur, and he was moving far faster than was generally humanly possible, let alone proper procedure for surgical operations. Beneath the invisible tutelage, Tomo's wounds seemed to vanish, replaced by stitches and eventually bandages. In less than a minute, there remained no sign of Tomo having ever been injured, save the bandages and wraps that covered up the stitching.

Derek finished up and sighed heavily, suddenly looking somewhat tired. "That's it for that. Tomo, you're all fixed up."

Kagura couldn't contain herself. "That… that was beyond amazing! It was… it was… amazing!"

Derek stared at Kagura. "Er… yes… thanks." He smiled wanly at her, and turned, only to come face-to-chest with Sakaki.

Well, she'd gotten pretty tall over the years, and he was still hunched over with exhaustion.

"You… you have to teach me how to do that."

"I'm sorry, but… it's not something you can teach. Unfortunately, the Healing Touch is something you have to be born with… I don't think I see it in any of you. Tomo had it, but it'd be quite a stretch for more than one of you to have it."

"I see," said Sakaki, slinking back to join the group.

"It was… incredibly awesome! So awesome that… that… it was too awesome for words!"

"Eheh, thanks for the accolades, Kagura."

"I'm sorry about being so excitable, really. It's just… I was so worried about Tomo, 'cause it was my fault and,"

"Osaka."

"Ow. Ah… I'm sorry, I didn't mean to… I mean, I'm sorry if how I was talking confused you or something, I just… I'm just so relieved!"

"Oh, don't worry about confusing me with words," replied a smiling Derek. "I'm a surgeon, yeah? Very smart, you know. I went to school, and all that stuff. It's kind of hard to confuse me with just words."

Osaka stared at Derek, and grinned in a way that was almost feral.

"What is it?"

"Who polices the police? The police police. Who polices the police police? Police police police police police police."

"Ahh! My brain!"

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**Author's Notes**: Whee, chapter over. That one was fun, I got to introduce a new character. I never really got a strong impression of Derek's character from Trauma Center(too focused on how hard it was ) and so I wound up concocting this one from what I could remember, and what I thought would be nice. There's reasoning behind it, but you'll have to wait for Derek's character blurb to get all of that.

Derek's comment about Osaka being San Francisco's sister city is just that. Manila, Taipei, and Shanghai are also sister cities of San Francisco. Abidjan, Assisi, Caracas, Cork, Haifa, Ho Chi Minh City, Paris, Seoul, Sydney, Thessaloniki, and Zurich(with an umulat over the u, but I don't know the alt code for that) are also siser cities of San Francisco, but there is that concept of taking a joke too far that I thought I should keep in mind. Besides, it was a weak joke to begin with.

Oh, right! Standard stuff. Reviews make me happy, and a happy me is more likely to update the story! Get ye to reviewing, or I'll break out the funnel and the eels!


	18. Intermission

**Author's Note**: This is a brief intermission chapter. It's very short, but I'd been updating kind of quickly lately, and suddenly I stopped. I wanted to tell you guys somehow, but I felt wrong without at least writing a little bit of an update. I apologise in advance if the story doesn't seem to move terribly much with this chapter.

Anyway, who's next on our character blurb? Oh, hey, why not Yomi? For our group here, Yomi is the voice of reason. She's always struck me as the person most grounded in reality for the show, and it was a simple extrapolation to make her be the person to throw down some logical conclusions here and there. For this story, Yomi is not hard gay for Tomo, because I kind of didn't feel like fitting romance in here anywhere. I'm not a romance writer by any means, you know? I much prefer being funny (well, I'd like to think so). It's silly, but I like dividing up the things I stick in the stories into a little pie, you know? There's the 'Weird Jokes' part, which falls into Osaka's slice of the pie. Logical conclusions and inner thoughts that reveal things about the environment fall into the Yomi pie. Azumanga pie is delicious.

I'm sorry, I almost didn't get dinner today.

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Tomo leapt to her feet, wearing an impossibly wide grin. She pointed the expression deftly at each person in the room, then looked herself over, flexing arms and legs that had previously been covered in wounds.

"Hmm, well, I guess everything's alright, eh Derek?"

"Alright? I'd say that they're better then they were before you were injured. As a matter of fact, you had cancer in the knees. I fixed that right up while I was over there, because I got bored just sewing up stitches."

"You're joking, right?"

Derek simply smiled at Tomo, not answering.

"Osaka."

Osaka grinned at Derek and took a step forward. Derek's smile quickly vanished as he involuntarily took a small step away from the girl.

"Don't do it! I was just kidding! No cancer, I promise."

Sakaki stepped forward, her mere presence silencing conversation and calling attention to herself. "Excuse me, Doctor… er…"

"Doctor Stiles, but you can all call be Derek."

"Yes… erm… well, I know that you said that it was impossible for me to learn how to utilize the Healing Touch, but… it's simply such an amazing phenomenon. I've never seen it before, or at least, not until I came back into contact with Tomo and subsequently yourself."

"Yes!" shouted Kagura. "I'd love to find out exactly what happens when you execute it!"

"Ah… hmm… well, Tomo, would you like to explain it?"

"Nope. This one's all yours, master surgeon."

"Gah! Fine, fine. The healing touch is a technique that, simply put, accelerates the user's perception of time. For the user, it feels almost as if everything around himself is sl-"

"Or herself." Tomo added.

"Y…yes. It feels as though everything around himself or herself is slowing down. To outside observers, it looks as though the user activating the healing touch is accelerating to inhuman levels. Effectively, the user slows down time for himself or herself. Surgeons have used the Healing Touch in order to perform astounding medical feats and save lives."

"Erm, well, I don't perform astounding medical feats," muttered Tomo. Her expression brightened again, and she added, "But I do save lives, or at least, I'd like to think so."

Kagura couldn't contain herself, and exploded in a burst of noise that could only be defined as both awestruck and joyous. It shortly organized itself into actual words. "Haaaaaah! Wow! That's… amazing! You can manipulate time, you mean? What… what an incredible ability! You could never make a mistake… you could always pause and think things through! Never have to worry about little slips or… or… waaah!"

"Nah, can't be that spectacular," corrected Yomi. "If it were, Kagura, then they'd never stop using it, but we can obviously see that right now they're moving at normal speed. Obviously there's some kind of drawback, right?"

Derek opened his mouth to answer Yomi, but Osaka beat him to it. "What if they are using it all the time, but unless they need to, they simply move all relaxed and sloooooowlike?"

"Er… no, we don't do that," corrected Derek. "The truth is, to activate the healing touch requires the user to concentrate intensely upon something, and it is very taxing on the brain. Furthermore, the body is simply not built for moving in an accelerated time frame, so it consumes an incredible amount of energy, such that it is usually not possible to sustain the Touch for a considerable period of time, and furthermore it is usually not possible to use the Touch for a day or two after it's last been activated."

"Hmm… I guess that makes sense," conceded Osaka. "Although I think you could've said something more fun, y'know? Something like 'I don't want to age my youthfully handsome face by speeding up time so much! As a surgeon, the stress already causes me to grow old before my years!' or something like that. I thought you were supposed to be some kinda genius, yeah?"

"Erm… ah… I'm… Chihiro, what are you doing?"

Chihiro was busy staring daggers at Derek. Realizing that she'd finally been noticed, she harrumphed and finally said what was on her mind. "Derek, you're an imbecile, you know that? You go and tell everyone about the Touch, and yet, you've contradicted yourself!"

"You're starting to sound like Wright."

"This isn't a videogame, Derek. Someone's going to have to call you on it, and it might as well be me. You've always stressed to Tomo, ever since you taught her how to activate the Touch, that she should not use it unless the circumstances are absolutely dire, right? And… and you used the Healing Touch on Tomo?"

"What? Of… of course! She was in a fairly bad condition, you know."

"No she wasn't. Flesh wounds here and there, but she'd already survived the last thirty minutes on the jet ride here. A few more minutes while you worked in normal speed wouldn't have cost her anything dear, you know?"

"Ch-chihiro… what are you getting at?"

"I'm saying, jackass, that you used the Healing Touch simply to impress all the girls here! You're going against everything you've taught Tomo, and you know how she is, don't you?"

Tomo frowned and turned towards her partner."Chihiro, relax. Derek didn't do anyth-"

Chihiro cut her off. "And what if, later today, when he goes back to Caduceus, he actually needs the Healing Touch in order to save someone whose life is actually in grave danger? What if someone dies later today simply because he squandered his gift in order to impress some girls?"

Derek frowned. "I'm sorry, Chihiro."

The otherwise plain girl simply glared some more at Derek, and then turned to Tomo. "Anyway, now that they're here at **Low-Key** headquarters, we're going to have to at least introduce them to the bosses, aren't we?"

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

"Right then. Follow me, everyone. You too, Derek."

The group followed Chihiro from a short distance, the girls taking in the sights of the surprisingly calm **Low-Key **Headquarters building. Chihiro walked down a nondescript hall and turned at an unlabeled corner, still obviously seething. Naturally, this quashed any conversation occurring behind her.

_This place…_ thought Yomi. _This place is so… sparse. There aren't any labels or anything anywhere… for someone to actually manage anything useful here… they'd have to be working here for quite some time. Perhaps it's a measure against espionage._

Still, for the duration of the trip, nobody talked. The silence cracked slightly as Chihiro creaked open a nondescript door, motioning for the girls to meet the people who were presumably Chihiro, Tomo, and Wally's bosses.

"Holy freakin' crap!" exclaimed Osaka.

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**Author's Apology: **Yeah, I'm extremely sorry for the shortness of this chapter and the delay in the updates. It's only really around half size, and the story didn't progress much at all, and you didn't even get to see that cocky french bastard or the pair of not-so-cunning linguists. Anyway, there's a reason for this, and I'm sure most of you can guess it. Last sunday, I moved into my dorm, and I've kind of had a hard time finding... er... time to write, you know? Don't worry though, I haven't abandoned this story, and hopefully I won't do something outrageous like forget the story and come up with another side-plot in which everybody becomes hard gay for everyone else and I slowly escape while you're distracted by raving lesbians. That won't happen. I still know where I want this to end, I just need to figure out how to get there.

Oh, and for anyone keeping up for Investigating Kimura, I'm not going to do a short intermission chapter for that. The next update I write will be for Investigating Kimura, and with any hopes, I'll give that story a good ending, or... er... I'll turn it into some horrible episodic detective show.

I'll probably do the former.

Even though this is a terribly short chapter, I'd still like to have comments. I loev comments.


	19. Holy Freakin' Crap!

**Author's Note**: Holy Freakin' Crap! It's taken me a while to update this thing, and I apologize about that. A lot. Y'know, busy with college and all that, but... actually, nevermind. No excuses! Anyway, I'd like you to know that while I haven't been updating terribly often, I haven't stopped thinking about this story, so there're still ideas and such, so don't think it's dead just yet! Well, anyway, here's to hoping my writing skills haven't atrophied.

Ah! Right, a character blurb. Why not go with... Leo! Y'know, since he doesn't appear in this chapter... at all. Originally, I intended Leo to be a girl. Sorry about that, man, but I thought the quirkiness with languages would be that much cuter coming from a girl. After a brief moment of though, I realized that I didn't really have any guy characters in the story except for Rémy and the heretofore unnamed BAD leader/general/Rock-Paper-Scissors champion, and that both of them were kind of... well, you know, on the bad side. I didn't want to have it turn out lookin' like all women were good and all men were bad, so I gender-switched Leo. He's a good guy, really, even though he works for BAD. Just an engineer tappin' away at things, tinkering with them to make them better, and generally being nerdy in the process. Appearance? He's just your typical nerdy guy, nothing terribly special about him. Don't expect a **BURNING LEO** mode any time soon.

Without further adieu, here's the story.

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"Holy freakin' crap!" shouted Osaka. "Tomo, Chihiro, holy freakin' crap!"

The other girls were in more or less the exact same state of surprise that Osaka was in, but chose to be frozen by surprise rather than reacting in a similar fashion.

"Y-yeah, I guess it is a bit shocking," Chihiro said to Osaka, smiling and trying to calm down her former classmate.

"No, no, this isn't just a bit shocking, this is completely and totally mind-blowing, you know? This is not the sort of thing that you just up and spring on folks without any sort of advance warning!"

"For what it's worth… we're insincerely sorry," Tomo said, not helping the situation at all."

"Even if you were sincerely sorry, we'd still be pretty damned surprised and perhaps a little pissed! Tomo, Chihiro, you knew about this, and you never even thought to toss us a word of caution? I'm…. I'm almost angry! I mean, you just let us sit here all this time and believe what we wanted to believe, just so you could spring this on us right here? That's cruel!"

It should be noted that up until this point, Yomi, Kagura, and Sakaki all agreed with Osaka.

"Tomo, Chihiro, Wally, how could you not say anything at all? Your organization…. Its name ain't **Low-Key**, it's **Loki**!"

Not anymore.

Chihiro, who had never really had a terribly large amount of experience dealing with Osaka's haphazard and idiosyncratic trains of thought, was thrown for a loop and possibly a few barrel rolls. "Osaka… wh-"

"No, Chihiro, you can't say anything to change this! The fact of the matter is that you let us believe you worked for **Low-Key** all this time, and in fact you were working for **Loki**! I mean, all this time, I thought your organization's name, **Low-Key**, meant that you guys liked to work under the radar, to be very sneaky and sly and generally hard to notice! I mean, that all makes sense, what with that name you know? Spies have got to be sneaky!"

Kagura glanced at the person who'd originally surprised her and then at the sign which had actually surprised Osaka, and then turned towards Osaka herself. "Osaka… I th-"

"No Kagura, no. I mean, all this time I thought their organization was supposed to be all sneaky and sly-like, and now I find out that they're actually named after the Norse god of trickery? This is world-shattering, Kagura! Mind-blowing! I shat bricks!"

"No you didn't." muttered Yomi.

"Figuratively!"

"Oh, Osaka, you haven't changed much at all, have you?" asked a familiar, soothing voice.

"Eeeh? Who said that?" asked the spacey girl, her passionate fury exchanged for the general air of confusion that was much more suited to her.

"That," answered Yomi matter-of-factly, "is what the rest of us were busy being surprised at."

"It's kind of rude to refer to your old teachers as 'That.'"

"Ah! Miss Kurosawa!" shouted Kagura, running through the general confusion and embracing her former coach tightly.

"Hello again, Kagura. It's been a while, you know. To be honest, after you left school, I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again."

The former gym teacher smiled gently at all of her former students (along with Wally and Derek, who weren't former students) and sat back down behind her desk. "It's very nice to see you all again after so long. While we would love to spend a good amount of time with the how-do-you-dos and the what-have-you-been-doing-all-these-years, we haven't really got the time. I'm the head of… well, **Loki**, as Osaka pointed out earlier. Welcome, but we've got business to do."

"We?" asked Sakaki.

"Yes, we."

"No, I mean you said 'We would love to spend…' you know? Almost as though there were more than one of you."

"Maybe the head of a secret agency has to use the royal We," Osaka proposed.

"No, no, we, as in me and Yu… where'd she go? Yukari, get in here!"

"What? Oh, fine, fine. Oh, look, it's you guys again. How're you doing?"

"Really, Yukari, all I needed was for you to be here when they arrived, and you run out on me just as they come in? I'm not even sure why you work here!"

"Because you need a translator, my still-stupid friend. English is the language of the world nowadays, and you don't understand a lick of it."

"I do."

"**No she doesn't,**" Yukari said to the girls.

Osaka, Sakaki, Chihiro, and Yomi laughed. Kagura and Tomo missed the joke entirely.

"What did you just say? Nevermind… I've still got Koiwai, you know."

"Pfft, Koiwai works from home and is always busy with that daughter of his. I'm your only hope."

"Yeah, you're right. Yotsuba did grow up nicely though."

"I bet the boys like that sort of exotic, foreign appeal."

"Don't let Koiwai hear you talk like that."

"He's never here anyway."

"Sorry to interrupt your conversation," Chihiro interjected, "but we do, as you were saying, have business to attend to. Reports and whatnot."

"Oh, right, right. How'd everything go?"

Tomo smiled and shamelessly gave her report. "Well, I arrived at Chiyo's household and met up with her and Osaka as planned. Shortly afterwards, two thugs came in to take her, so we had quite a bit of luck with my arrival. I took care of them easily. Afterwards, we went to dinner while waiting to be picked up by Wally, and we were attacked by another six men. Unfortunately, this time the odds were stacked too highly against me, and they made off with Chiyo. They did not, however, take Osaka, probably because the patents are all published under the Mihama name."

"So then BAD does have Chiyo."

"Yep. Anyway, in the process of losing to the six guys, I was shot. I wound up staying the night at Osaka's house, which also happens to be Chiyo's house, to recuperate and wait for Wally to come pick us up. He did that the next morning, after Kagura nearly pummeled him to death."

"I… I thought he might've been another one of the BAD guys. It… was… very… you know?"

"Don't worry, Kagura," said Wally. "No hard feelings, yeah? Anyway, when I picked up Tomo, we decided to bring the remaining girls along, as they were now involved in the whole ordeal. We flew over to pick up Chihiro, and we'll just let her take over the recap for now, as she's far better at giving reports than either of us are."

"…right. I managed to grab the papers as planned, and easily made my way out of the building and get to the jet. Upon further inspection of the papers, we found out that a top-ranking BAD agent was headed for Kyrzygstan to negotiate with the president after helping them win the war with Darcia. The papers also indicated that agents were being sent to China and Zaire, as well as several other countries, but Kyrzygstan was the closest to us as well as the most current. Furthermore, if you'll excuse me saying, customs in Zaire sucks. I also hate elephants."

"I don't like elephants either," added Yukari.

"…right. As you were," Minamo said.

"Anyway, we went to Kyrzygstan. Kagura, Tomo, and I went for the infiltration, as numbers really do matter. It went shockingly well for the first part, but went sour partway through. Tomo sustained a grenade injury, and we had to take the Kyrzygstanian president hostage in order to escape."

"So… the Darcian insurgents in Kyrzygystan… that was… us."

"Exactly. We loaded Tomo onto the jet, flew back here, and after a quick visit to Derek, here we are."

"…So in the end," started Minamo.

Yukari interrupted her before she could say anything meaningful. "Chiyo's missing, we don't know where she is, BAD has expanded its influence, Tomo's been injured several times with no benefit to us, and now we have civilians in **Loki** Japan HQ. What? There's no point in dressing it up."

"Y-yes…" said Minamo.

"Oh, well then, at least things are somewhat interesting."

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_Gah. I wish things could be at least somewhat interesting, _thought Chiyo Mihama. The girl's brain went several trillion miles per second and routinely broke laws of the universe, and when moving at such a clip, it was frustratingly easy to run out of things to do.

Chiyo glanced around the room one more time. Kaori was once more out and about, probably hanging around with Leo. Chiyo couldn't think of the two as lovers, and in fact couldn't really think of Kaori settling for anyone other than Sakaki, but they were good friends and spent a significant amount of their time together.

What about me? I can't go out and make friends; I'm still a prisoner to this room, although it is quite a pleasant prison. I've spent so much time sitting in this room, doing nothing but waiting. What was I waiting for?

_I've got to look at the situation again._

_I've been kidnapped. That part is astoundingly clear to me._

_The kidnappers are not malicious towards me, or at least, don't seem to want to harm me. They've imprisoned me in a freakin' hotel room, for god's sake. _

_This building, this hotel, is not a normal hotel. If what Kaori and Leo have told me is true, than this building is actually floating thousands of feet above the earth's surface, bobbing to and fro and generally making its merry way around the continents._

_Tomo is a secret agent, yes, but what exactly am I expecting her to do? There isn't really an easy way to infiltrate a flying building, even if it's simply filled with drunken scientists._

_Assuming it's only filled with drunken scientists._

_Okay, so rescue is probably out of the question. What are my options?_

_Sit here and languish in the hotel room. It's very plush, it's very comfy, but in the end there's really nothing for me to do here but wait._

_This is the BAD headquarters, yes? BAD sent me an invitation a while ago, but I didn't go because I didn't want to leave Osaka alone, and they hadn't sent her an invitation. Perhaps it's because the patents are only under my name. Either way, they wanted me to come here, presumably to get drunk, have fun, and work on all sorts of things for them. It doesn't sound like a bad gig, really, but… I don't really want to give in to people who've forcibly abducted me. It'd probably encourage them._

_Try to break out and escape myself. I'm smart, but I've no experience in espionage or anything like that. Not really an option._

_What to do… what to do…_

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"What to do, what to do…" muttered Chihiro. The non-**Loki** members had withdrawn to another room for the time being, and it was simply Chihiro, Wally, Tomo, Yukari, and Minamo speaking.

"About what?" Tomo asked.

"Chiyo, of course. We lost her, so the obvious order of business is to get her back, yeah?"

"Well, I'm afraid it's not quite so simple," Minamo said.

"What do you mean?" Wally asked.

"Chiyo was kidnapped, and that's a significant loss for **Loki** of course, but there's also the problem of BAD. They're our chief target right now, and from what Chihiro's papers have told us, they're expanding their influence at a rapid pace. Nepal, Zaire, Kyrzygstan…. They're all fairly small countries, not terribly large players on the world stage, but the mere fact that BAD has an influence now is going to attract more attention. Even worse is their pact with China. While it doesn't seem like a big deal that China isn't going to attack them, it's the sole powerful communist government left in the world. If the western democracies start to take action against BAD, it's fairly likely that China will move to protect it, simply to be contentious. They're stronger now, definitely something to be afraid of, and they'll want to let the world know that they know that."

"So what you're saying…" muttered Tomo.

"What she's saying," interrupted Yukari, "is that there are more important things to deal with than Chiyo going missing. BAD has positioned itself to be a lynchpin in the matters of the world, and we need to put an end to them as soon as possible. If this mission comes down to either saving Chiyo or dealing severe damage to BAD infrastructure, you need to choose the latter."

"Yes, I'm afraid that that's the fact of the matter." Minamo added quietly.

"Of course, you don't need to tell the girls out there that."

"No, no, of course we won't tell them that," said Chihiro. "Anyway, BAD headquarters consists of a floating hotel building. There aren't any visible engines on the outside, so taking it down would probably mean destroying most of the building. Ordinance that does that usually doesn't go up that high, and furthermore the international outcry at losing so many scientists would be tremendous. This means that we can't simply blow it up, we'll have to infiltrate it."

Wally looked around at the women in the room. "How do you infiltrate something that floats thousands of meters above the ground?"

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**Author's Notes**: I am still powered by reviews, although the pocky from the school convenience store sure does help. Ah, anyway, it's damn nice to hear from you guys, so do say something. Feedback changes mediocre stories into awesome ones. Oh, and tell me who you want to hear about next for the character blurbs, as I'm more or less just picking them randomly right now. 


	20. The Cloak of Gyges

**Author's Note**: Whee, new chapter. Sorry about not updating like… ever, but I'd been mildly busy with school, you know. Winter break's coming soon though, so perhaps this means that I can now get back to work on this stuff.

Here's hoping that my skills haven't deteriorated over the past months, eh?

Oh, and of course, a Character blurb! Actually, this blurb isn't for a character… it's for an organization! **BAD!** While they call themselves the **BAD **guys, I'd really like to stress that they're not exactly **BAD** guys, per se. Of course, they're going to be antagonists. They'll be doing things that are generally opposed to what our heroes want to happen, but they do it for a reason. **BAD **wants global dominion because it believes it can make the world a better place by controlling it. They are not evil simply for the sake of being evil. They are not "Hey, let's make a gun that's powered by cute kittens and also gives people AIDS" because it's evil, they are "let's kidnap Chiyo because having her genius with us will aid our cause that much more." They aren't really the sorts of people who you could hate, although I guess that's up to you. I just want to point out that they aren't evil for evil's sake.

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Kaori, floating thousands of meters above the ground, recoiled in shock.

This was not because she was floating thousands of meters above the ground, because when floating thousands of meters above the ground in what can be exactly described as a levitating, middling-sized hotel, one tends to not notice the thousands of meters of air between the earth and themselves. Kaori was in no way shocked because of this.

She was shocked because of what was in her room, or, to be more accurate, what wasn't in her room.

"Kaori, what happen?" asked Leo.

"**Leo…**" started Kaori, still shocked.

"We get signal. What's wrong?" Leo asked, confused.

"**Leo…** **Chiyo's gone," **she replied.

"Hmm?" he asked, not getting it.

"**Chiyo… not… here…" **she mumbled, also not getting it.

"Eh?" he asked, still not getting it.

At this point, Kaori got it. _Oh hell! He doesn't know Chiyo's a prisoner, so it wouldn't strike him as odd if she ever left my room!_

"**C'mon, Kaori, tell me what's wrong?**" asked Leo, switching to his native language after realizing that Kaori might be talking about a serious situation.

_Crap… what to do… what to do… _

"Uh, well, you see, Chiyo's not in my room, you see? Yeah, that's right, you can… er… totally see, you see, that she's not in my room."

"**I see. What're you getting at?**" C'mon, Kaori! Think! There's a way out of this! LIE LIKE A DOG!

"Uh, well, the thing is, when Chiyo was in High School, she was looked upon as something of a prodigy, you know?"

"**Naturally, she was what, twelve or thirteen when she was studying there, wasn't she?**" Ah! Okay, let's see… where to go from here… "Uh, you see, Chiyo, being seen as such an overwhelming prodigy, drew a lot of attention from everyone. Being a genius, it wasn't like she could be hampered by this in her studies or anything, but the problem was that it was still stressful on her young mind." "**A tragic story indeed.**" Yes, yes, quite tragic. Think about that! "Oh yes, it was very tragic. As the years burned on in high school, she began to withdraw more and more from people, doing as much as she could to avoid the stares. Around the time of our graduation, she was a borderline hikikomori. "**So you're saying that she was becoming a reclusive person as a result of the attention, right? Very antisocial and whatnot, if I'm getting the context correct."**

_Oh, I hope he doesn't tell Chiyo about this. _"Yes, that's exactly correct. When we met up with her again, I was surprised that she seemed so sociable, but even you must have noticed that she almost never left my room. I just assumed that she was still in her that state of mind. I guess I was just a bit shocked that my assumptions were wrong."

"**Ah, so that's it. I wonder where she's gone…**"

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Yukari Tanizaki, not floating thousands of meters above the ground, recoiled in shock..

"You… you can't be serious, can you?"

"Unfortunately, Ms. Tanizaki, I totally am," replied Tomo coolly.

"You traitorous wench! You vile child! How dare you do such a thing! I… I… gah!" she yelled, quaking with rage.

"Sorry, Yukari," said Minamo, "but we trained our agents to make their decisions on their own, and we picked them for the traits that led them to assess situations on their own terms and make their own decisions. Such a shame that that had to lead to this, I guess."

"A shame? Is that all you can say? They're practically turning their backs on the organization! You can't be going along with her, can you, Chihiro? Wally?"

"We're sorry, Ms. Yukari," started Wally.

"But on this matter, we agree wholeheartedly with Tomo, strange as that may seem," finished Chihiro.

"You…!"

"Look, Yukari, baby," said Tomo, grinning widely, "this is just the way the chips fell, you know."

"…"

"The thing is, we really don't think that you should be the one writing our mission briefings. Yeah, you were an English teacher and all, but they always turn out really, really weird, you know… Especially our last one, what with the bit about the real estate agents… What exactly was that about?"

"…"

"It's a valid complaint, Yukari." Minamo added.

"Get out of my office."

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Chiyo, floating thousands of meters above the ground, did not recoil in shock.

"**I see, so that's the kind of work that you intended for me to do when I finally decided to hop on board."**

"**Yes,**" replied the man on the throne.

"I have to say, I somewhat expected something like this. But of course, I'd like to ask you what you'd want to use it for first… and I'd like to know your name. Why would I work for someone who won't step out of the shadows, let alone tell me his name?"

"**Just call me Joseph."**

"**I see. Well, Joe, you want me to work for you on something I've already done, right? Something that you want me to tinker with, to improve."**

"**Those are fairly bold statements, Miss Mihama."**

"**Bold for a reason, Joseph. I've read the news reports, and I'm almost positive I know what you want me to work on for you."  
**

"**And that would be?"**

"**The cloak of Gyges."  
**

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Ayumu Kasuga, not floating thousands of meters above the ground, did not recoil in horror or do anything of the sort. She simply calmly watched as Tomo, Wally, and Chihiro were literally thrown out of Yukari and Minamo's office.

"Hello hello, comrades!" she said, smiling.

"Ow…" muttered Wally, rubbing the area on which he'd landed.

"That was a terrible, terrible idea, Tomo," Chihiro stated. "Still, her reaction was worth it."

"Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree." Tomo replied.

"Uh, guys?" said Derek, drawing the **Loki **member's attention. "What happened in there?"

"Nothing, nothing," said Tomo, grinning. "Ah, right, right, anyway, just some things here and there. We've got to infiltrate BAD headquarters, can't just shoot them down, and even though we're not sure where Chiyo is, we've at least got Aladdin."

"Aladdin?"

"Ah!" exclaimed Osaka. "That's right, that's right! Dr. Stiles, you don't know us in the slightest, do you? I'm Aladdin! Er, rather, my name isn't Aladdin, but it's not really Osaka either, so I guess both are equally valid. I'd like it if you used Osaka though."

"…right."

"So anyway, BAD headquarters floats like a gabillion feet off the ground, we don't know where Chiyo is, and just as a reminder we also don't have a way to sneakily fly up to where BAD headquarters actually is."

"So," started Kagura, already looking glum, "outlook terrible, right?"

"Oh, don't be so dour, my meat-headed friend! This just means that we get to relax a bit while the higher-ups try to figure out exactly what our next course of action is."

"So we're powerless, basically," said Chihiro, not helping the conversation in the slightest.

Yomi, having grasped the situation and understanding the need to simply wait calmly at this point in time, decided to steer the conversation away from this course of discussion. "Er, anyway, as we were saying, we'd all led fairly mundane lives, right? Mine was an exercise in normality until Chiyo's bird found me, and although Athlete, Veterinarian, Surgeon, and Secret Agent might have been considerably more interesting, the three of us had simply been living lives that were for the most part normal. You however, Osaka, have been involved in the process of inventing things, presumably for **Loki**, but perhaps for other purposes as well. This isn't really a future we could've forseen for you at all in high school. What've you been doing all this time?"

Osaka looked at Yomi, then looked past Yomi, as though she was consulting with something beyond the proper universe in order to answer the question. Eventually, her focus shifted again and she looked once more at Yomi. "Oh, well, I guess that's a valid question, although I don't really see how 'Secret Agent' is any less weird than 'Inventor'."

"Eh? Don't dodge the storytelling, Osaka!" shouted Tomo, doing exactly that.

"Er, fine, fine. So like I told you guys before, well… not Derek and not Chihiro and not Wally, but anyway, like I've said before, when I was in college, I spent most of my time studying Humanities and stuff, right? Y'know, Literature, history, the whole gauntlet of things. I could've had a lot of fun being a professional student if it wasn't so blasted expensive bein' one.

Of course, I couldn't. I'm not made of money, so I went out to make some, yeah? With that kind of background, it seemed pretty obvious to me what kind of job I should've done."

"Obvious?" asked Sakaki. "'Humanities' covers a lot of things, you could've done a lot of stuff, but I guess… being a writer of some sort seems the most obvious."

"Right on, Sakaki!" said Kagura. "That's definitely what I saw Osaka as, if anything."

"Yep, you two are right. I thought that way too," continued Osaka. "I walked around Tokyo after a while, going up to people and saying various things."

"What's that got to do with being a writer?" asked Wally.

"Things like 'Dear sir or madam would you read my book? It took me years to write, will you take a look? It's based on a novel by a man named Lear and I need a job so I wanna be a Paperback Wri-"

"Stop right there," said Yomi. "You didn't do that, you didn't say that, at least, not that exactly."

"Oh? Who did, then?"

"Probably some lads from Liverpool," muttered Wally. "Er, right, anyway, back to the story."

"Yes, back to the story. So yeah, that whole writing gig didn't work out, and I got pretty bummed out and I went over to America to visit Chiyo. No slight against any of you, but back at Kiyohiko High I was probably closer to her than I was to any of you, and I missed her after all these years. Turned out that she was doin' her genius thing, having more degrees than I could count and a bit more to boot. I hung out with her for awhile, and it was all well and good, very cheerful, you know, like a reunion should be."

"Ah, so that's how the partnership started… or rather restarted," commented Chihiro.

"Yeah, well, the partnership kind of got cemented when I broke down and told her that I didn't want to go back to Japan, that I didn't want to face my parents because I couldn't find any work at all despite all their efforts to put me through college."

"And?" asked the enraptured audience.

"And she wrote me up a very professional looking letter, in perfect English, telling my parents that she was an employer in America who was very impressed with young miss Kasuga's potential for appealing to American audiences and that she would provide housing and living supplies until I could get on my feet."

"Did it work?" inquired her listeners.

"Like a charm. My mother thought that I'd found my niche in America, and told me to follow my dream, even if it meant that I had to be far away from the family. So… I ran away, and for a while I was really bummed out, and I just loafed around Chiyo's house being a lecher. But of course, y'all know that girl, don't you? People don't really change much, and she was still that ridiculously kind little girl we knew from high school. She didn't berate me or pressure me to do anything; she simply took me in and let me live.

I felt horrible about it, mostly because I realized I was being such a lecher. I tried to find work in America, but it turned out almost exactly like trying to find work in Japan, except English wasn't my primary language so I couldn't even do half as well as I did in Japan. Eventually, I looked around Chiyo's workplace and noticed a few things."

"What, exactly, do you mean by that?" asked Yomi. "That could mean a lot of things, especially when you're being so vague."

"Well, I didn't think it at the time, but Chiyo seemed to have a lot of trouble coming up with terrifically original ideas, so she was tinkering with the idea of invisibility. It's an old, common goal, talked about for forever but never really achieved, or at least, never to any great extent.

Well, she wanted to change that, but she had trouble coming up with a way to actually make someone invisible. I asked her if the person actually needed to become invisible, or if simply being really well hidden, like a chameleon or something, was enough. Apparently, just that sparked something within her, and a few days later she'd designed this absolutely ridiculous bit of fabric. I'm not sure exactly how it worked, but it was a big, flat video screen that doubled as a camera, and as a result when she put it in the right spot, folded accordingly, it vanished from sight."

"Ah, so you were here inspiration," said Kagura. "You're certainly strange enough to create some weird thoughts, eh?"

"Hey, Kagura, shut up." Osaka said sharply.

"Eh? What? I'm sorry!"

"No, no, the story ain't done yet. Anyway, I was totally amazed by this thing. It was freakin' crazy, I tell you, and she made a larger one afterwards. She was still unhappy with it, though, because for it to properly hide the person beneath it, she realized that it had to also blind them. She sat for a long time trying to figure out a way to make it so that the person underneath could see outside while being hidden, but she couldn't come up with one."

"Ah, the dilemmas of geniuses, eh?" commented Tomo, grinning at Kagura. "Good thing you don't have to deal with that."

"What's that supposed to me-"

"Shut up."

"Oh, sorry."

"Anyway, like I was sayin', Chiyo ran into a problem there, and so I decided to relate to her the story of Gyges. It's a pretty long story, so I won't bother, but the gist of it is that this guy, Gyges, finds a ring and it makes him invisible, able to avoid punishment from anything. The philosopher who put forth this situation argued that if someone never had to fear punishment from anything, then they would be naturally driven to do bad deeds, because they'd benefit without havin' to worry about the drawbacks. I told Chiyo that perfecting this device like she wanted to would be like giving everyone who got it a Ring of Gyges. She resisted for a little bit, but eventually decided that it was for the best if the cloak remained the way it was."

"So… the problem was resolved?" asked Sakaki, hoping for a happy ending.

"Yeah, it was. Because of the story of Gyges, Chiyo decided to name the cloak the Cloak of Gyges before publishing her patent, and then she told me that I was now employed as a product advisor for Mihama Industries. That's how our work relationship began."

"You know, I prefer wearing mine as the Cape of Gyges." Tomo said, activating her cloak immediately, causing it to flash several terribly bright colors. "Tomo's Technicolor Dreamcoat! Ha!"

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Joseph recoiled in shock. "**The Cloak of Gyges… how did you know that that is what we would want?"**

"**As I've told you already, I've head the news reports, I know what's going on. I can see what you're doing already. China was the kicker, of course. You've got a small number of nations under your dominion already, don't you? How many now?"  
**

"Oh, just a few here and there."

"**Yeah, enough to pose a minor threat to things, but this is all you need to do. Now that you've got this and what looks to be support from China, you can move on to your plan."**

"**And what would our plan be, exactly?"**

"**Threaten a Western, capitalist society. It doesn't matter how, just threaten it in some way. When you do, the western democracies will rally together to fight you off, and you will be horribly outgunned. The smaller states under the Dominion will suffer terribly underneath the capitalist onslaught. China, however, has pledged at the very least a non-aggression pact with you, and while you are not exactly allies, you won't be seen as enemies by any stretch of the word. China will likely step up in some way, as they've been militarizing over the past few years and are the lone major communist power left in the world. They would not want to be seen as a meek power by any means."  
**

"**So we've sacrificed ourselves to restart the Cold War, or maybe even World War II. How's this reveal the Cloak to you?"**

"**This is simple. You antagonize the Western democracies, and then you disappear from the world's eyes. Countries who have pledged themselves to the Dominion will think that their leaders have been underhandedly assassinated, and will fight all the harder. China will sense an opportunity here, and will fight harder as well. East versus West round two, correct? At the end of this, it doesn't matter for you if the communist powers win or if the capitalist powers win or if the entire world is nuked to smithereens."**

"**Why wouldn't it matter? We'd want the communists to win, don't you think?"  
**

"**No, because at the end of this you'll come sweeping back into the public eye, this time lauding yourselves as having survived the worst that either side could throw around. With the major powers having been weakened by the war, you can recruit the smaller nations much more easily and as a result leap from being a minor player on the world stage to a major one, or even a superpower, but you need the Cloak to pull your vanishing trick, and it's hard to fly this thing as is, let alone fly it when you can't see outside and have no idea as to where the ground is. For this to work, you absolutely need the Cloak of Gyges, and you need it to be improved."**

"**You're remarkably astute, Miss Mihama."**

"**Some people call me a genius."  
**

"**So, are you going to do it?"  
**

"**Sorry Joseph, but I promised someone a long time ago that this was as far as the Cloak of Gyges project would ever get."**

"**You know what this means, right?"**

"**Yep, throw me back in the brig. Not the same one, of course, nothing as cushy as a fancy room with an old high school friend. This will be simple imprisonment, won't it?"**

"**As I've said before, you're remarkably astute."**

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Kaori sat quietly in her room, alone.

When is Chiyo coming back? 

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**Author's Notes**: Annnd it's updated! Hoo-hah! I haven't forgotten about my story or my dear readers, I've just been busy with various things. I do have to say that writing these is far more fun than doing calculus or reading up on philosophy notes, and I wish I'd spent some time on these instead of just relaxing or whatever it is I've been doing with my spare time lately. I hope that you enjoy this as much as I've enjoyed writing it. 

Oh, and my sister spilled coke on my laptop keyboard, so the keys are a bit sticky when I type. If there're any typoes, I apologize profusely, and I hope that they did not detract from your reading experience.

hikikomori is the word that the Japanese use to describe young people who are undergoing severe withdrawal from society and nearly become hermits. If you want to understand it better than I can explain, look it up… 

A philosopher arguing about the nature of mankind posed the story of Gyges. He wanted to ask about the nature of piety, of morality, and of all that good stuff. The question, of course, is "If there were absolutely no way he could be punished, would man still follow codes of ethics?" Osaka, obviously, does not think so.

If you want more information about these two subjects, well, you are on the interblags, aren't you? Use Wikipedia, or just research them a bit on your own. I'm not nearly knowledgeable enough to cover them myself.

Bleagh. I misspelled hikikomori. Fixed that now. Sorry if you went to look it up and were… er, well, disappointed, maybe, but that doesn't feel like the right word at all.

Ah well, that's all, really. Put down a few reviews, please. They make doing this that much more rewarding. I'd scribble out a formula to calculate my level of enjoyment versus the number of reviews, but I'm afraid that I don't have enough data yet! This means I need more reviews, of course.


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